I will never forget what my hometown taught me: though classes might be cancelled and mail not delivered, today, Martin Luther King Day, is a "day on" not a day off.
The March on Washington is taught as if it's recent history, which makes it seem crazy (at least to me) to think that the famous "I Have a Dream Speech" was given a full 49 years ago. But in another way, it's crazy to think that it was given only 49 years ago. So much has changed since.
"...little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and girls as sisters and brothers."
Of all the beautiful rhetoric and passionately delivered words in the speech, this has always been the image that most stuck out to me. I imagine Dr. King penning the words in his heart, all the while seeing in his mind's eye the so-yearned for image of his sons and daughters playing tag in a backyard with children of Caucasian friends. I see him jot those words down with tears in his eyes, and then I see him deliver them, holding onto the picture of his children and infusing all his claim to it into the words issuing from his mouth.
Sometimes I think of those words when I walk among the children at the community center here in Muncie. There are white boys and black girls, and black boys and white girls, all "sitting down together at the table of brotherhood" for as simple a thing as a snack of graham crackers and grapes. Here: a scene that would have been priceless 50 years ago, viewed weekly by volunteers who don't hardly know not to take it for granted.
Of course, not everything is fixed. The community center is in a bad part of town, and the population there appears to be predominately black. While there is no racism or anything like it among the children, sometimes I catch them subconsciously segregating themselves. I wonder about these signs, and take them as a reminder of how different things once were and how far we've come.
I also take them as a reminder to keep coming. Because being different is good and a matter of course - but being afraid of different, or threatened by different, or made prideful by differences - those are the things that are wholly unacceptable. If ever our society is challenged to accept differences again - and it is, every day - the challenges will not come looking like those Martin Luther King battled and taught us to overcome.
Which is why I think, if Dr. King could tell us something today, it would be to keep dreaming. We have had success - he'd point it out there on the playground down the street. But if we know Dr. King, if we yearn to share the energy and ideology so immortalized into this great historical figure, we won't be afraid to turn our heads to the other corner, where a homeless veteran is traumatized by PTSD, a child is kidnapped to pose for pornography, or a gay student is bullied to death.
The problems are always going to be there. We don't need, and probably won't often have, someone to stand at podium and proclaim to the nation that the problems are real and wrong. Rare will be the moments of clarity and purpose where we can stand united together and say "we will overcome."
Yet, already, we have done some overcoming. What are we for, if not to do more?
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