Today I went with the family to the Douglas County Martin Luther King Jr. unity walk. It was a short, 2 mile walk with a bunch of other people to celebrate and remember the life of MLK. At the end of the walk there was a short presentation where an actor performed two of Kings most famous speeches.
There were two things that hit me while I listened to these performances. First, I could not help but imagine the power these words must have carried the first time they were delivered in 1963 and 1968. It is hard for me to picture how different the world was then. Even though I was born in 1968, I did not grow up in the world King and his companions did. I grew up in a world that was changed by them. Second, I could not help but think that some 40 years later the best we can do is re-enact these speeches from a different time.
Don’t get me wrong. I think these were amazing speeches. But I cannot help but wonder, where are these voices today? I know they are there and numerous. But we live in a time where powerful oratory ability does not seem to make much of a difference. Maybe in our multimedia culture our attention spans have become too short to listen–really listen–to an hour long speech. Especially, the speech of a dissident. Today it is easier to consume and regurgitate sound bites and slogans. But to put your life on the line in the pursuit of a dream is costly. I fear that I don’t have the ability to do it. And that is not a pleasant thing to think about.
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!”
Martin Luther King Jr. — 1963
