April 14, 2003
A UMNS Feature By Linda Green

  "Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. 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.'"

- The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.    

Forty years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I have a dream" speech, African Americans have achieved success on many levels - professional, social and political.

Those were aspirations that King held out in his speech, along with a vision for society as a place of social and economic justice, equity and equality. The speech, delivered Aug. 28, 1963, was a defining moment in the life of the civil rights leader - a life cut short when King was assassinated April 4, 1968.

King's call was rooted in the American ideal of equity and justice for all. The cornerstone laid through years of struggle in the 1950s and 1960s supported the success that African Americans have enjoyed since then. But what does King's dream mean for today's generations? Does it mean the same thing to Generation X'ers and millennials as it did to their parents, or has it been lost, deferred or reinterpreted?

Leon Franklin, a 21-year-old student at Gammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta, says he and his peers have had to interpret the dream for themselves "in a cloudy landscape of ideas and interpretations" that leave them "frustrated and confused." He finds that ironic, he says, because "young adults are the dream."

"Young adults comprise the first generation of Americans raised in integrated public school systems, and Jim Crow and 'de jure' segregation exist in their minds as pages in history books," he says. While the parents hoped their children would grow up in a prejudice-free society, Franklin sees evidence that racism and racial tension remain problems - the verdict and riots that followed the trial of white Los Angeles police officers accused of beating black motorist Rodney King; the use of Native American imagery in professional sports; the profiling of Arab Americans in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; and attempts to roll back affirmative action.

However, young adults possess greater tolerance because colleges and universities now offer courses in multicultural studies that help build sensitivity to the ethnic and cultural traditions of the United States and the world, Franklin said. "It is in these efforts of education that we find many young adults redefining the deferred dream of their parents in exciting and provocative ways."

Sixteen-year-old Alexandria Hicks of Nashville, Tenn., believes the "dream is at a standstill." She attributes that to "those deeply submerged in the vileness of the world of yesteryear who refuse to believe in equality." Because of the opposition, she and her peers - all African Americans - feel as though they are in a battle, characterized by struggles "that seem petty - too petty to fight outwardly."

Trudie Kibbe Reed, president of historically black Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Ark., wonders if "we've ... really claimed personal ownership of King's dream."

"Perhaps because of the failure of my generation to mentor and pass on the dream, too many of our young people do not vote, have little interest in eliminating world hunger, and seem apathetic about addressing a social consensus that appears to take for granted that incarcerating is a better option than educating," Reed says.

"We are reaping many benefits from those who gave their lives for a vision of a world and church in which the full humanity of all might be realized," she says. "It is up to us to break down mental walls that resist that vision, and to work with the generation to come to refashion a society according to King's dream," she said.

With the exception of segregated Sunday worship, today's youth and young adults have not shared the experiences that formed and shaped their parents. They have not dealt with public facilities and services that are segregated based on race.

"My generation has failed," Reed says. "We have failed both to translate the dream, with the values it embodies - mutual respect for the dignity of every human being - to a new generation and to impart that dream to those we mentor today."

The real impact from King's life and vocation came in the transformation of mindsets, with the emphasis on accepting people regardless of differences that seem to divide, she says. King called for a change in thinking that was far more fundamental than taking social action. Reed says that if outward behavior does not reflect inner transformation, a revolution in values, then people are deceiving themselves and are not living the dream.

Asked what this generation should be doing to keep her late husband's legacy alive and to keep the movement going, Coretta Scott King, in an interview with BET.com, says, "I think there is a tremendous need for young people to be educated and to understand what Martin Luther King's method of nonviolent social change meant. They have to be informed on the issues, but they have to be informed on how do you organize a campaign to work for change, and that's why his principles of nonviolence that he used are so important. I hope the younger generation will study those and understand what it means to live a nonviolent lifestyle, and I would hope that once people are educated they will read a lot of his writings ... and that they would organize themselves."

In his book I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr., Michael Eric Dyson, a prominent African American pastor, asserts that King's speech has been taken out of context and used to oppose affirmative action. In fact, Dyson says, King advocated social action and affirmative action policies not only for people of color but for poor whites as well.

Recent assaults against affirmative action have been highly publicized. The Supreme Court is reviewing two University of Michigan cases challenging the constitutionality of including race among factors in admissions decisions. The justices heard arguments on the cases April 1 and are expected to give their rulings by June. In January, President Bush used King's birthday to launch his assault against affirmation action.

King raised the affirmative action issue amid the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. He knew that the Jim Crow laws of segregation, the concept of "separate but equal," had to be changed. Separate but equal, as King and other civil rights leaders pointed out, was a farce.

Affirmative action is an intentional effort to ensure that African Americans, other people of color and white women are given the chance to receive all the benefits of society: education, employment, housing and the opportunity to pursue the American dream.

Throughout the Lyndon Johnson administration in the 1960s and continuing into the late 1980s, society made strides in implementing affirmative action. That has resulted in African Americans, other people of color and white women, becoming more common in leadership positions throughout society.

April 11 marked the 35th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, which Johnson signed to prohibit discrimination in the sale, financing or rental of housing because of race, color, religion, sex, disability, family status or national origin. The act was amended in 1988 to provide the Department of Justice and Department of Housing and Urban Development larger roles in enforcing the law, in an effort to combat discrimination in housing across the country.

But where are we now? "There is clearly a setback in education, the key factor that ultimately determines where equality is realized," says Brenda Wilkinson, author of The Civil Rights Movement: An Illustrated History. The country has poor grades at every level, from day care, where funds have been cut; to public education, which has seen a rise in segregation in addition to funding decreases; to higher education, where a move is afoot to abolish affirmative action, she says.

African Americans acknowledge the progress made but wonder if people have become caught up in hyperbole when asked if there is an assault on civil rights and policies that give an edge to minority students. Their argument is that there have always been people opposed to any legislation that would benefit African Americans and other minorities.

"As long as there are unequal opportunities in this country for individuals to learn, there will remain an uneven field for pursuit of equal chances to compete in society. Subsequently, we will move more rapidly toward being 'two nations." . . There will continue to be the haves and have-nots, and all the ills of society that result from this," Wilkinson says.

A product of the segregated system of the South who reached adulthood in the '60s, Wilkinson was optimistic that the country was moving toward not only a "new South" but also a "new America." She believed that all the "haters" of the older generations would die off, and the next generations would want "no part of the mess of the past. In my wildest dreams, I could not imagine baby boomers, my generation, reaching middle age and possessing the same old racist attitudes and selfishness of their parents. But I have been rudely awakened and see whites my age only concerned with getting theirs and segregating themselves as much as ever."

Although life today is far better than it was for their parents, many African Americans say they still have a long way to go.

Bishop Charlene Kammerer of Charlotte, N.C., says King's dream is the same as God's dream - for all people to be in community and unity with each other across the globe.

"I see little children across the world who don't see barriers of race, ethnicity, language, geography, religion, but who just hold out their hands to each other, smile and play, whether they speak the same language or not."

"I feel that in some ways we as a people have no real dream because we continue to ride on the dream of Dr. King. When a people continue to ride on a 40-year-old dream, they ride a nightmare," says the Rev. Arnetta Beverly of Madison, N.C. The dream becomes a nightmare because it is never realized.

She says that African-American children today can enter the front door of any school and receive an education beside children from other races. They also can live in any neighborhood their parents can afford, "but unless and until those little black boys and girls are part of the decision-making process in this country and share power, they will still be the little black boys of King's dream," she says.

"We as a people are also losing the dream of Dr. King," she says. "I feel that because the village has been shattered by drugs, violence, individualism, greed, complacency and apathy, there is no one left to raise the child. The children are being reared by television, movies and shallow superstars," she says.

In the anthem "Lift Every Voice and Sing," the church is commissioned to remember the past and challenged to continue the struggle until victory is won, but in fact, "we have strayed from the places of our God where we met thee," Beverly says. "Our hearts have become drunk with the wine of the world," which keeps dreams from becoming reality, she says. "As parents and grandparents and elders in the village, we need to teach our heritage, affirm our culture, instill everlasting values, uphold moral truths and show love like Jesus," she says.

People of color are reaping many benefits from those who gave their lives for a vision of a world in which the full humanity of all might be realized, Reed says.

"It is up to us to break down mental walls that resist that vision, and to work with the generation to come to refashion a society according to King's dream, one that gives hope and healing to all."

United Methodist News Service
Linda Green is United Methodist News Service's Nashville, Tenn., news director.