Banks are closed today. We won’t get any mail. The nation is observing the birthday of one of our greatest Americans.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would be 87 if he were alive today.
His life came to a violent end on April 4, 1968. Yet we remember him today for the message he left behind, which was to seek change through peaceful means.
His greatest moment during his brief time among us? It had to be that speech on Aug. 28, 1963, at the Washington Mall, under the shadow of Abraham Lincoln’s Memorial.
We know it as the “I Have a Dream” speech. It’s been reported before but I want to mention it once again here.
The guts of the speech — the part of it that resonates to this very day — was delivered extemporaneously.
The first two-thirds of Dr. King’s address was fine. It flowed nicely.
Then came the rhetorical riff that stands for all time. The part where he told us of his dream that black children and white children can play together, how the world could sing out “Free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last!”
The improvisation came reportedly at the urging of legendary gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who was on the podium with Dr. King and others that day. “Tell them about your dream, Martin,” she urged the great man.
And he did. He delivered. The world cheered at that moment.
Yes, we’ve made great strides since then. Congress has passed laws guaranteeing all Americans their basic civil rights and the right to vote. We’ve witnessed symbols of racial oppressions taken down from public squares. We have blended public school systems that had been separated by the race of students.
More work remains. Perhaps there will always be work to do.
However, today we remember a young Baptist preacher whose soaring rhetoric took a nation a huge step forward to the day when our dreams indeed will come true.
Happy birthday, Dr. King.