I have a dream. Martin Luther King Jr. said those words. What was that dream? Is that dream still alive today? Martin Luther King Jr. spoke those very words at the Lincoln Memorial in the National Mall in 1963. Did Martin Luther King Jr. dream ever get fulfilled? As a nation are we still trying to make that dream a reality? I remember when those words were spoken. I was 10 years old when those words were spoken and 15 when he was assassinated in 1968. Martin Luther King Jr. was the leader of the Civil Rights movement that started in 1955 with the Montgomery Bus protests until his death in 1968 in Memphis when he was there supporting the sanitation workers strike. For 15 years he held the attention on much of the nation. He work was for voting rights, desegregation and labor equality. I wonder what he would think of what we have accomplished in the 55 years since his death.

Voting rights was a huge thing back in the 50s and 60s. Voting rights may not be the right words. Maybe voter suppression, to outright denial of voting would be better words to use. The local governments, prominently in the South but not exclusively to the South, worked hard to deny people of Color the basic rights that White people enjoyed. Racism had existed in America since the first slave was brought here in 1619 and it is embedded in our real history whether we like it or not. Blacks have actually been slaves on this continent longer than they have been free men and women. Why were Blacks enslaved? We can say all the things like because Whites thought they were inferior beings or that Whites were superior and meant to have dominion over inferior beings. Remember when it came to the national census in 1790 they were only considered 3/5^th of a person. What did it really come down to? Greed! Power was exercised over a whole group of people because of greed. That greed still exist today. Blacks were not the only ones. Indians were treated with the same disdain and were also enslaved in the early days of our colonization of the America’s.

 When it comes to voting rights how far have we really come? In the 50s and 60s voting rights were denied by state and local government. I will say that I don’t think that the political party mattered back then as much as where you lived. I remember when Johnson signed the Civil Rights Bill after the Bloody Bridge in Selma, Alabama and the march to Birmingham. I know that many southerners felt betrayed by Johnson because Johnson was a Southerner himself. That was the death of the Southern Democratic Party. Today Blacks do have to right to vote but because of gerrymandering the Republicans work to make sure that their vote really doesn’t count as much as it should. Voter intimidation is also very present along with the number of polls making for longer lines for minority voters.  They do have the right to vote but they still have to jump through hoops to make their vote count for something.  Many of those same politicians that will sing the praises of Martin Luther King Jr. will be the very politicians that are working so Dr. King’s vision on real equality at the elections polls are still not a reality.  

Lincoln emancipated the Black slaves in 1865 but did that really make them free? I would argue that freedom, real freedom, is not something that is there for many minorities. By that I mean can you have real freedom when you have an economic system that creates poverty?  Sure they can change jobs but what will the economics be on the next job?  Jumping from one lower paying job to another is not going to get anyone out of poverty. Today you can live where you want and eat where you want but our economic system still create segregation because many can’t afford to eat or live where they want. Most Blacks and minorities can’t live where I live just because they can’t afford it. You can create affordable housing but those will never be built in the nicer neighborhoods. As long as you have such a low minimum wage and make it hard for labor to organize you will always have people living in poverty. People can’t even afford to pay rent let alone afford a house payment. You add healthcare on top of that and you will see that a large portion of our country really do not have equal freedom. The law may say what they are able to do but reality says something completely different. Whenever anyone tries to come up with programs that would help the People that will start the yelling of socialism and communism. We have all heard that. The People that have do not want an even playing field for the People that don’t have. They want to be the ones that look down on the “have not’s” so they can still feel superior and think that the poor are something less than human. In some ways our attitudes toward minorities hasn’t change since we started colonizing this continent.

This Martin Luther King Jr. Day many politicians will give speeches and issue statements on how much they admired the late Dr King but I will always want to remind you that talk is cheap. The people that enabled gerrymandering really do not grasp the message or embrace the words of Dr. King. When King was shot he was supporting sanitation workers demanding better pay so they could lift themselves out of poverty. Those that want to keep people in poverty instead of everyone being paid a livable wage do not grasp the meaning of Dr. King’s message. Those that work to take away any group of people’s rights have never understood the message from Dr. King. I will leave everyone with this one last thought as everyone sings the praises of Dr. King. To Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Black Lives always mattered.