When I was in Middle School, I remember one year for Martin Luther King Jr. Day that we were all assigned to learn the famous 1963 address at the Lincoln Memorial by Dr. King, known as his I Have A Dream speech.
Maybe it was a report. Some of my memory about that time in school is fuzzy these days, the finer details tossed aside for fresh information. None of this is important but to set up this: at the time of entering teenage angst and still with a doe-eyed understanding of the world, these were words of inspiration and formed an early moral foundation of what I would like American life to be.
Then, well… I could detail the past two decades of the American life that has essentially turned that philosophical version of my past into a much more cynical man today, ready to say shame upon all of our houses for what has come to pass in these most recent of trying times.
Dr. King’s vision for America remains simple: not that any of us judge one another by the color of our skins, but by who we are as people.
It has come to pass that in the years since Dr. King gave that speech and was killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in April 1968 that we have turned the corner toward progress on racial equality in America, then walked around the block and ended up right back where we started.
During a brief graduation trip following my exit stage left from Sparkman High School with my dad, along with my sister Kendall and her now-husband Matt, drove to Memphis. One of the places we visited was the museum that is part of the complex around the infamous spot where Dr. King was killed.
The emotions in such a place are always a mix of being horrified about who we were collectively in the past, and also grateful about who we were in that moment. I felt heavy that day, all the ghosts of the past weighing down my soul. Even in June 2003, idealistic Kevin had hope for a future where there might be days where inclusiveness for all was the norm, and not just another barrier-shattering moment heralded as an event in history in which we should be proud to be an American.
Let’s understand each other plainly: America has a very mixed record in terms of equality for all. As an Armchair Historian and writer of the first draft of events in local news for a long time now, I can say with certainty that no matter what you believe, we have seen progress toward Dr. King’s dream, and then we have erased it.
Electing in the past 12 years Barack Obama twice as President, and now Senator Kamala Harris as Vice President, appointing more women and people of all creeds to positions of standing and power. We’ve had real conversations and legal battles to right a lot of wrongs in American life.
Then there’s been what seems a long litany of ugliness and hatred that reminds us that injustice of the past remains alive and present in our daily lives. Too many people have been killed by police, and by heavily armed madmen. Hate groups grew in recent years instead of disappearing completely from the scene.
Instead of condemning the rhetoric of the Proud Boys, we’ve had in President Trump a man who thinks “there’s good people on both sides.”
No matter your view, we can all agree that these darker days of the American experience should remind us all that in terms of equality – and in that I mean that we apply the law across the board the same for everyone at the very least – we still have much work to do in our nation.
In fairness, we are but a young country when compared to nations where our forefathers came from and though we have previous experience fighting among ourselves, we’re not accustomed to the dangers it poses on society as a whole. A lot of people are scared out of their minds at the moment, others see this as a grand opportunity to exploit for their own gain.
I see this as a reminder that we are not perfect. If we want to keep the status of being the shining light on a hill for the rest of the world to see as an example, we have to keep earning that privilege through hard work on our end.
So I say to you on this day honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that it would be shameful for us to fail at living up to his dream. A dream he died for well before his time.
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