| Jan192009 | Martin Luther King Jr. Day |
More than 45 years since “I Have a Dream.”
As an Australian, I was never really taught about MLK, the civil rights movement, or any American history at all besides a brief note about their departure from British rule. I’ve heard the words, “I Have a Dream,” referenced in random places but never understood the remarkable events that inspired it, the bitter struggle to get there and the subsequent violence that both preceded and followed it.
As a kid, I remember installing Microsoft Encarta, a digital encyclopedia that was competing against several others in this new age of CD distribution and multimedia. I remember that while the vast spans of text were practical, they weren’t particularly interesting compared to the animations, videos and sound clips. It’s where I learned how a nuclear chain reactions worked, DNA sequences, the moon landing, and the first paragraph of Dr. King’s speech. Being so young at the time, I had no idea what the complicated rhetoric meant or its historical importance.
Even now as a full-grown adult, I don’t think I could ever understand what it means. Not having lived it, breathed it, nor ever believed such injustice could exist in a country such as this one; I can’t understand.
A few years ago, on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, I was alone at home doing absolutely nothing. Flipping on the television, I found a documentary on the civil rights movement as led by Dr. King. I saw footage of Washington’s empty streets before it turned into the extraordinary gathering around the Lincoln memorial. The strength and faith to trust in democracy and peaceful protest. It helped me understand a lot more about the context of the speech; it demonstrated the complicated issue of race in this country and, most of all, it showed that America is a country that fights to march towards greater and more equal civil rights despite what the popular opinion of the time will be.
| More? |
|
