"...Early morning, April 4
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride..."
~ U2 - Pride
(In the Name of Love) The Unforgettable Fire (1985)
"I
Have A Dream" (excerpt)
by Martin Luther King, Jr,
Delivered
on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on
"Five score years ago, a great American,
in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This
momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro
slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a
joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years
later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.
One hundred years later, the life of the
Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of
discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of
poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years
later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and
finds himself an exile in his own land....
...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 slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of
brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a
desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be
transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four
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..."
Source:
Martin Luther King, Jr: The Peaceful Warrior, Pocket Books, NY 1968.