Today is the 21st celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and once again I'm marking it by watching King's "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered on August 28th, 1963. (American Rhetoric's outstanding page includes a transcript and streaming audio, as well as the YouTube video below.)
If you're looking for a way to reflect on King's legacy, I encourage you to take 18 minutes out of your day and watch the whole thing; it always chokes me up a bit and makes me feel both proud and ashamed to be an American. On a related note, I recently read Debra Dickerson's The End of Blackness, and it's far and away the most thought-provoking book I've encountered on the subject of race in America. I hope to talk further about why I found it so compelling in the near future, but for now this brief mention will have to do.
3 Responses
Thanks, Ed. I really appreciate you sharing that speech. It was by far the best 18 minutes of my day.
I'm glad you had a chance to see it, Sage. It's unusual, but somehow rewarding, to have such a clear sense of a day's highlight, isn't it?
Ed
Absolutely! That would be a valuable exercise: to name the day's high point every day. Keep our eyes trained on the pinnacles!