Let's take a pause to reflect on this day. Read the "I have a dream" speech again (or for the first time).
The speech deliberately echoes with parts of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
The speech is still a call to action today.
Look back at what has occurred over the years since Martin spoke. Each group has continued to fight for their individual rights and the establishment has marginalized them. Isolated them. The union movement is in shambles. Where is the woman's movement these days?
Abe said: "It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
Martin said: "When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
Will brothers and sisters of all races and creeds, unite against injustice?
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