{"id":2698,"date":"2010-08-28T02:15:35","date_gmt":"2010-08-28T09:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=2698"},"modified":"2010-08-28T02:15:35","modified_gmt":"2010-08-28T09:15:35","slug":"he-may-be-gone-but-his-dream-still-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/08\/28\/he-may-be-gone-but-his-dream-still-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"He May Be Gone, but His Dream Still Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tom122007_Painting_Painting\"<\/a> Last year I broke from my tradition of covering \u201cI have a Dream\u201d on this day and covered<\/a> \u201cBeyond Vietnam\u201d, the other Dr. King speech I personally attended, instead.  This year, I return to tradition.  Although Glen Beck\u2019s exploitation of this event dominates the news cycle, I will not cover that in this article, because of who Dr. King was, and who Beck will never be.<\/font><\/p>\n

When I was a ten year old boy, I was diving for mussels in the bay.  I came up under a boat, hit my head, and knocked myself silly.  When I came to, a black boy about my age was holding onto me with one arm and the boat with the other.  We talked for a couple hours, and I came to realize that all the hateful things my father had taught me about negroes (that was the polite term in 1958; African-American had not yet been invented.) didn\u2019t fit this boy at all.  In youthful innocence, I took him home to meet my family.  When we walked into the living room, my father turned beet red and screamed \u201cGet that little n*gg*r out of my house!\u201d  After I exposed him to that, the boy was no longer interested in being my friend, but I became the only ten year old civil rights activist in the neighborhood.<\/font><\/p>\n

Five years later, at fifteen, I had already been to the south to protest for civil rights, and on August 28, 1963, I was in the crowd on the mall.  I did not meet Dr. King until an organizational meeting for Vietnam Summer, shortly before his \u201cBeyond Vietnam\u201d speech kicked it off, but his message that day was so clear, I felt I did.<\/font><\/p>\n

Without further ado, here is \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d in its entirety.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

The message and the dream still live.<\/font><\/p>\n

If you prefer text, click here<\/a>.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year I broke from my tradition of covering \u201cI have a Dream\u201d on this day and covered \u201cBeyond Vietnam\u201d, the other Dr. King speech I personally attended, instead.  This year, I return to tradition.  Although Glen Beck\u2019s exploitation of this event dominates the news cycle, I will not cover that in this article, because […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","category-politics","category-19-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}