Fifty years ago today, August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. – a driving force in the effort to end segregation and racial discrimination – stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered these unforgettable words: Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice . . . 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 that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood . . . I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character . . . When we allow freedom to ring . . . 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!” # Lord, as You have brought right from wrong to strengthen this nation, use the trials in my life to strengthen my character. “No longer . . . a slave, but more than a slave – a beloved brother.” Philemon 1:16
Posted on: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 11:14:19 +0000