Dream

I remember several years ago, driving in my car, I think it was the Avenger :) …anyway... That must have been the year I was in-between jobs in January, because around 10, 11 am I was driving in downtown Winnipeg on a Monday, I remember I was on Carlton listening intently to my radio. Our local Christian radio station was somewhat honoring the day and played MLK’s famous speech. The speech is so vivid in my mind, it feels as though he just made it a few years ago.

I am at work today, but it’s a pretty quiet day (market-wise, I'm still busy), all the US markets are closed and I was nostalgic of when I heard his complete speech a few years ago, somehow that moment was embedded in my mind. Well, here’s an excerpt from his speech made in August of 1963…

“I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so 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."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

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 black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." (quoted from Isaiah 40: 4-5)


This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.”


Martin Luther King