As thousands gathered on Washington to mark 50 years since Rev. Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech, several issues continue to elicit debate. One important question which this commemoration will ask is whether the dream Rev. King had had finally come true. Fifty years down the line, American citizens, most especially African Americans still believe not much has been done to ensure greater equality for all. For the hundreds of people who had marched to the Lincoln Memorial and who will in the coming days, it is hoped that historic speech will further help to solve recurring problems, especially those which deal with issues pertaining to unemployment, voting rights, economic disparity, equal protection under the law, immigration and gun violence which recently provoked angry debates and a swift call to change the laws in many American states which allowed the use of deadly force if a person felt seriously threatened.
It is fifty years since that speech was made yet fifty years down, not many believe the United States has made progress. Two dissenting views/opinions suffice here. One opinion argues that with the emergence of a black man as America’s president coupled with the elevation of Eric Holder as the first black US attorney general, King’s vision of an America ‘where his children will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character’ has finally come to fruition. To this group of people, there is nothing left to prove that a black man and every other race of American descent cannot be who he wants to become. Others however, see this opinion as total balderdash, most especially at time when racial profiling hit an unprecedented high recently, causing provocation and ill feelings in many parts of the country. They cited the example of the recent brutal killing in Florida of a teenage black boy, Trayvon Martins by neighbourhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman and the latter’s subsequent acquittal. Such issue, they claim, makes nonsense of the so called ‘non-existing colour bar’ or ‘unity in diversity’ America peddles around the world.
The question on the mind of this writer goes beyond the opinion of the two schools of thought above. In as much as we subscribe to the fact that Barack Obama is today’s American president who surprisingly won a second term in office over a year ago, which to many around the world is a significant progress on the part of most African Americans, the seeming query here is about what the average contemporary African American has done in ensuring a steady rise to personal upliftment? While this writer acknowledges giant steps taken by many blacks in today’s America, there appear a growing number of others who have helped to build a young black, male culture which embraces guns and violence. The Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the event planners commemorating the 50th anniversary was supportive of this claim with his critical rebuke of many young black males who disrespected women saying: “Don’t disrespect your women. Make it clear that you know that Rosa Parks wasn’t no ‘ho,’ and Fannie Lou Hamer (voting rights activist) wasn’t no bitch”. He chastised a society that he said leaves young men without a moral compass stressing that: “We need to give them dreams again, not to worry about sagging pants, but sagging morality.’’ He lastly noted that: “If we told them who they could be and what they could do, they would pull up their pants and get to work.”
With this obvious truth, it goes to show there is still much work to be done, especially at a time of dwindling economic fortunes in the country. Despite huge gains politically and in education, a poll by the Pew Research Centre in Washington believe far more needs to be done to achieve the colour-blind society that King envisioned. How this will be accomplished is simply a task the young blacks who Rev. King picture as the future of America like Obama is in the present, must take seriously.
For those who are not in the know, Rev. King was among six organisers of the 1963 march, leading about 250,000 people to the Lincoln Memorial to deliver his “I have a dream” speech from its steps. The period before this witnessed the continuous maltreatment of the black man despite the enviable Emancipation Proclamation issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War which forever banned slavery. The proclamation is believed by historians to be one of the great state documents of the United States. King’s speech and march helped spur passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act in 1964 and 1965, respectively. Having won a Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964, he was assassinated on April 4, 1968 at age 39.
President Obama who will be joined by former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter is scheduled to speak on Wednesday at a ceremony marking the actual anniversary of the march at the Lincoln Memorial with a nationwide ringing of bells at 15:00 local time to commemorate the exact time King delivered his speech.
With high unemployment among blacks and voiced concern for the Voting Rights Acts which the US Supreme Court has sent back to Congress to revise, coupled with the issue of racial profiling, demand for statehood for the US capital’s District of Columbia, which has no voting member of Congress and educational cutbacks in some States, it is hoped the 50th anniversary of Kings speech will give those who matter the need to take positive action and embolden the American spirit to tackle these seeming teething problems. When this is achieved, like King had envisioned, “allof God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Raheem Oluwafunminiyi, a social commentator tweets @raheemfunminiyi
