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…
It would take a nation of millions to hold us back.
Brown v. Board opened some doors.
Back then they called all blacks Negroes.
We kick it off of the top sort of like cerebrals.
Separate isn’t equal, when in practice.
My school is a shack. Mine is a palace!
Do I have to sit in the back of the bus? That’s wackness.
Second class citizen on account of my blackness.
They say to change the world, you’ve got to take a stand.
Rosa Parks took a seat and changed the face of the land.
Martin had a plan that even if you want to change the world
that don’t mean you’ve got to kill another man.
Inspired by the people like Thoreau and Gandhi,
a pacifist in the war without an army.
‘Cause they can’t harm me, no matter how the end seems.
I wonder if Mr. King is still having dreams…
Let freedom ring…
I have a dream…
Let freedom ring…
This must become true...
So let freedom ring…
MLK had a dream, took it mainstream.
Civil Rights Bill, Voting Rights Acts, they passed.
Modern day Jesus, turning the other cheek,
some blacks like “dog, that’s weak.
I’m not looking to get beat deep into next week,
my everyday life is police brutality.”
Malcolm picked up X and dropped his slave name,
radical change, “defense by any means.”
Went on hajj to Mecca, said ‘let God protect ya,
Whites and Blacks, yeah, we’re in this together.’
But there are race riots, people are dying,
Warfare in Watts, tear gas, bullets are flying.
So JFK?
He got assassinated.
MLK?
He got assassinated.
Malcolm X?
He got assassinated.
So it’s up to us to keep that dream alive…
Let freedom ring…
I have a dream…
Let freedom ring…
This must become true...
So let freedom ring...
Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom
by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND
Brown v. Board opened some doors…
The first big victory for Civil Rights came in 1954 when the Supreme Court decided that “separate but equal” in schools was unconstitutional. The case was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the unanimous decision that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” because the system “generates a feeling of inferiority… that may affect [the minority students’] hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.”
In overturning Plessy v. Ferguson, the court had made a bold statement against racial discrimination. Most Southern states balked at the decision, and changed nothing. Resistance was so aggressive in Little Rock, Arkansas that Eisenhower sent in federal troops force the schools to desegregate in 1957.
Separate isn’t equal, when in practice…
In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that even when the schools were physically identical, separation causes inequality. But the schools for whites and the schools for blacks (or “colored” as they were called) were very rarely identical. White schools often received ten times the funding as black schools.
Rosa Parks took a seat and changed the face of the land…
The Brown v. Board of Education decision didn’t end segregation in the South. It just ended segregation in schools. Blacks still had to drink from separate water fountains, go to different movie theatres, go to different restaurants, and sit in the back of buses and give up their seats when white people got on.
On a December day in 1955, a forty-three-year-old seamstress named Rosa Parks boarded a bus after a long day at work in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks looked for a seat in the “colored” section at the back of the bus, but not finding one, she took a seat in the middle. When a group of white people got on the bus, the operator yelled out “niggers move back,” but Parks didn’t move.
Parks was quickly arrested and within hours the African-American community in Montgomery was uniting. They were led by the young minister at Rosa Parks’ church, a twenty-seven-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr.. King organized a powerful and effective bus boycott in Montgomery. In 1956 the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision outlawing segregation on buses.
Inspired by people like Thoreau and Gandhi…
King believed that the best way to bring about equality was through nonviolent civil disobedience. King was inspired by Henry David Thoreau, who had written about when breaking the law was called for and had refused to pay taxes for the Mexican-American War. King was also inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, who had lead India in nonviolently over-throwing British rule.
King was a religious man who believed deeply in the Christian teachings of hope, forgiveness, love and acceptance. These ideals directly influenced his strategies for achieving civil rights.
A pacifist in the war without an army…
Martin Luther King might not have had an army, but he did have followers. In 1957, he went to Atlanta to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which organized sit-ins at businesses that discriminated against blacks.
MLK had a dream, took his dream mainstream…
By advocating nonviolence and tolerance, King was able to sell his message to blacks and whites alike. Unlike more radical civil rights leaders like Malcolm X, King met with presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson to discuss policy. Before the March on Washington in 1963, when King delivered his famous I Have a Dream speech, President Kennedy spoke with King and told him to make sure the tone of the march wasn’t too violent, otherwise Congress might not pass the Civil Rights Act.
Civil rights bill, Voting Rights Act, they passed…
The powerful March on Washington drew 250,000 civil rights supporters to the Capital’s steps, but Republicans in Congress still refused to pass a civil rights bill. After Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson became president and outlined a Great Society program for America, part of which was to achieve racial equality. Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed racial discrimination in public facilities, through Congress in 1964. This was the same year that Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. A year later, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which encouraged black enfranchisement and protected black voters. It was a major victory for Civil Rights.
Malcolm picked up X dropped his slave name…
Not everyone was happy with King’s Soul Power movement, though. Some African-Americans felt that King’s non-violent, turn-the-other-cheek mentality was too weak to effectively deal with racial discrimination and violence. One of the first leaders of this Black Power movement was Malcolm X.
Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, Malcolm escaped a fire set to his house by white men when he was four. Later in Boston, he was arrested for burglary. While in jail he decided to drop his “slave name” and adopted X instead, arguing that his true, African last name had been lost on the slave ships.
He soon became the most prominent minister for a religious and political institution known as the Nation of Islam, under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad.
Radical change, defense by any means…
Malcolm X believed that blacks could only achieve equality and freedom through radical change. He called Martin Luther King’s March on Washington a “Farce on Washington.”
He also famously said, "we declare our right on this earth...to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary."
Went on Hajj to Mecca, said, ‘let God protect ya, whites and blacks, yeah, we’re in this together’…
In 1964, Malcolm broke with the Nation of Islam. A few months later he took a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, a religious journey known as the Hajj. In Mecca, he experienced a kind of spiritual rebirth that caused him to requestion many of his views towards white people. He came back to the United States with a much softer message, still advocating for Civil Rights, but offering a more conciliatory view towards whites.
But there are race riots, people are dying, warfare in Watts…
Meanwhile blood was being spilled all over the country. In 1963, a Birmingham church was bombed killing three African-American girls. Three civil rights advocates were murdered in Mississippi in 1964 (Mississippi Burning). In 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated.
It was in the summer of 1965 when a white police officer pulled over a young black driver to check him for drunk driving. This was in Watts, an all-black, run-down neighborhood in Los Angeles. The officer arrested the young man, but by that time a crowd had gathered. By the time the officer called for back up, the crowd had grown larger and angrier. They began hurtling rocks and bottles at the officers. The next day, the hot Los Angeles sun brought no respite: the protest had grown into a full scale riot with thousands of angry African-Americans marching through the streets. Instead of rocks and bottles, they had guns and Molotov cocktails. They set Watts on fire.
Thousands of national guardsmen were called in, and a battle raged for six days. The riot killed 34 people, injured more than 1,000 and caused $50-100 million in damage. The following hot summers brought more race riots, most notably in Detroit and Newark, New Jersey.
So JFK? He got assassinated…
The sixties were an amazingly turbulent time in America. While Civil Rights battles were being fought in legislatures and on the streets, a series of presidents, fearful of Soviet domination, brought the nation further and further into a war in Vietnam, a small country on the other side of the earth. America was then rocked by the assassinations of many important figures (and heroes to many) within the course of just a few years.
John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22nd, 1963. He had traveled to Texas to drum up support for his reelection campaign, and was driving a parade route in Dallas when he was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth story of a nearby building. A tremendous amount of controversy surrounds Kennedy’s assassination, with conspiracy theorists arguing that the government’s official story (that Oswald acted alone) doesn’t make sense. Oswald himself couldn’t be questioned because he was shot and killed two days later by an angry nightclub owner, Jack Ruby.
The charismatic President who had captured America’s heart was dead.
MLK? He got assassinated…
On April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was shot and killed, while speaking on a balcony at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was killed by James Earl Ray, a white racist.
The country fell into chaos. In more than 100 cities, blacks took to the streets in anger. The riots lead to 46 deaths and 27,000 arrests. The immediate and lasting effects of the death of Martin Luther King on America are impossible to quantify.
Malcolm X? He got assassinated…
Malcolm X was shot and killed in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem on February 21, 1965. Unlike JFK and MLK, Malcolm was living in a state of panic. Two weeks earlier, his house had been firebombed. The men arrested for his death were three members of the Nation of Islam, though the truth behind the assassination (as with many others) remains mysterious.
PERSPECTIVES
Unfortunately, Malcolm X, JFK and MLK weren’t the only prominent Americans assassinated during the sixties.
Medgar Evers, an African American civil rights activist from Mississippi was assassinated by a white racist in 1963.
Robert Kennedy was one of John F. Kennedy’s two younger brothers (Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy is the other). He served as the attorney general during his brother’s administration and used his position to fight corruption, racism and organized crime. After JFK’s assassination, Robert became a senator from New York, and began voicing his opposition to the Vietnam War. He decided to run for president in 1968, and many democrats were ecstatic about electing him. But just after the California primary, and just two months after the death of King, Robert Kennedy was shot and killed. The killer, Sirhan B. Sirhan, claimed he had killed him because Kennedy had supported Israel’s Six-Day War.
Words of History
“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become reality. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”
-Martin Luther King, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize (1964).
"I am not a racist. I am against every form of racism and segregation, every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color."- Malcolm X
The text and song are for review / promotional use only. Copyright Flocabulary, 2006. This song contains portions of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, license granted by Intellectual Properties Management, Atlanta, Georgia, as exclusive licensor of the King Estate.
