Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
“I Have a Dream.” Almost everyone knows it and values it, but few people have had the opportunity to understand its full dimensions—both those that precede Martin Luther King Jr. and those that create a future from his famous speech.
One of these dimensions is inclusivity. His emphasis on overcoming discrimination and inequality based on color is not directed against white people; it includes all of humanity. In his speech, he affirms the Constitution and the founding values of the United States, which were shaped primarily by a white population. Among the 250,000 people in the audience, there were people of all colors, including, of course, white people.
Another dimension of the “dream” is the idea that before changing laws, a new moral imagination of society must be created. This idea was deeply rooted in the Highlander School, where Martin Luther King Jr. received part of his training, and even more so among Rosa Parks and other leaders of the civil rights movement. First, they transformed this social imagination. Then came the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. This moral imagination mobilized not only radical sectors of the population, but also moderates.
Its historical dimension is also inclusive. As we know, King was a Baptist pastor and inherited the tradition of the biblical prophets who spoke of dreams of justice. The very idea of a new moral imagination of society points to a dream that is not merely utopian in the literal sense of the term, but a call to action that improves the world. After the speech, the idea of “keep your dream alive” spread widely, understood as both a purpose and a call to continue, throughout one’s life, imagining a better world and building it.
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