I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day, right there in Alabama, little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and little white girls as sisters and brothers.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Today was our local Bar Association’s annual Martin Luther King luncheon. The luncheon itself was very well run with a wonderful speaker, Dr. Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University, who kept the audience in laughter while teaching them humility and coexistence. His was a fine balance not easy of maintenance, and Dr. Gates maintained the balance well from his opening words until the end of his talk. A truly masterful performance.
As masterful as his performance was, something else which occurred struck me more forcefully. On two occasions, a local school choir got up to sing. The student members were male and female and ranged from in apparent age from 7 or 8 to 17 or 18. More importantly, they represented all of humanity’s imaginable colors – each one standing there next to another, each one arranged by size without any regard for his or her neighbor’s color. The most joyous thing for me about this array was my impression that none of the students had any concern for the fact that his or her neighbor might be of a different hue and, most significantly, my conviction that not a single one of these students would understand that had such a mixed choir been tried in 1960, the result in most parts of America would not have been the beautiful music they produced.
In point of fact, almost no one would have tried such a thing in 1960, nor would most have seen the point of trying – other than those few visionaries who led us out of that black and white wasteland.
In other words, I was struck by their apparent ignorance of their novelty when compared to the remembered school choirs of my childhood. I am not naive enough to think that there weren’t tensions of some sort up on the choir’s portable stage, but, whatever the tensions may have been, they weren’t those nurtured by apartheid, segregation, separate-but-equalism or any other title mankind has given to its various philosophies and acts of conscious racism. It appeared that these children know those philosophies only from study and classwork and not from first-hand experience.
What a wonderful thing, if so. If true, it seems to me that an even more important part of Dr. King’s dream is coming true than that portion of his dreams embodied in Barrack Obama’s impending inauguration as President. As powerful a symbol as Mr Obama’s inauguration is to us and to the world at large, imagine the long term implications for the human race when children truly see their friends as friends, regardless of their friends’ color, race or any other imaginable external categorization. Imagine a world where we can like or dislike someone solely because of their personal qualities, and not because of patent, but meaningless, external differences. Imagine a world where we simply accept one another as equal members of the human race.
I am not stupid enough to think we have already achieved such a world or that its achievement is imminent or even likely. But I am creative enough to dream and to imagine a world where such mutual respect reigns, and I saw that possible world in the eyes of those children and I listened to the power of its possibility in the magic of their voices. The comparison of that choir with those of my memories was truly inspiring.
Dr. Gates saw it too. This man, who walks with a cane and who obviously tires when too long on his feet, got up from his chair on the dais, grabbed his cane, and walked slowly down the choir’s front row shaking each child’s hand and giving each a word of praise. He gave them his ear, his time, his energy, and his respect. As enjoyable as his subsequent speech was, this will remain my my fondest memory of this remarkable man. As powerful as his message was, this small act spoke more loudly about the man and the size and quality of his heart.
The wonderful thing about Dr. King’s dream was its power to inform and inspire. I don’t believe that one can inspire without convincingly informing others of the reasons why change is needed. His was a powerful voice; a voice rich in the cadence of joy, firm in its presentation of the case for change, loud in its demands for equality and justice, and enchanting in the presentation of his vision.
Dr. King was both of his time and a prophet for a richly imagined future. I was fortunate today to receive an inspiring glimpse of our possible future, and I will be fortunate next Tuesday to witness a major step on the journey to that possibility.
