Honoring the dreamer

Continuing the dream

Today, in the United States, it is a federal holiday to commemorate the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today we remember the dreamer.

And we continue to work towards the dream.

“I have a dream,” he said, on August 28, 1963, a brutally hot and humid day in Washington, D.C., “a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.”¹

The lines of that speech — to hundreds of thousands gathered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on into the shadow of the Washington Monument — are among the most powerful ever spoken:

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

“I have a dream today.”²

What he said that August day more than 60 years resonates so very deeply today:

This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.³

Today, we honor the dreamer.

And we pledge to continue to work towards that dream.

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Honoring the dreamer,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 20 Jan 2025).

Image: Warren K. Leffler, U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress.