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Show Jan. 12, 1995 15 Hilltop Times 'Help somebody! Every American can make a difference!' theme for 1995 hoses and attacking police dogs. Kennedy sent 3,000 soldiers to an air base near Birmingham before calm returned to the newly integrated streets of the Alabama city. Throughout the country blacks and whites marched for equality. The culmination was to be the March on Washington. The march was the idea of A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, who envisioned it as a peaceful demonstration of the will for racial equality. Aug. 28, 1963, was a bright, clear day in the nation's capital. Even the weather cooperated, with temperaand none of the tures in the mid-80- s well-know- Washington summer n midity. More than 200,000 hu- Ameri- cans marched. Police officials expected trouble, but officers had little to do. Kennedy met with the march leaders at the White House. , i , The marchers gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to listen to speeches. King strode to the podium and delivered a speech as appropriate today as it was to that very different America of 1963. With that speech, the self-- i proclaimed "drum major for justice" tried to get America in lock-ste- p with equality. The country would never again be the same. By the next summer, Lyndon B. Johnson would sign a historic civil rights bill. The next year, a landmark voting rights bill would make more history. And many more marches in the name of civil rights would step across the nation. rir 5 K V$ jobs $. U-- g then-Preside- f I ; 8 ' t destiny is tied with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. And as we talk, we must make the pledge that we 6hall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. "There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, 'When will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the un-- i speakable horrors of police brutality; we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities; we cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from smaller ghetto to larger one; we can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating 'For Whites Only'; we cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and the Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No! No, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until 'justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.' "I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have como from areas where your quest for freedom has left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi. Go back to Alabama. Go back to South Carolina. Go back to Georgia. Go back to Louisiana. Go back to the slums and ghettos of our V:i' Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. "I say to you today, my friends, that 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 that all men are hold these truths to be created equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, 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 one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. 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. "I have a dream today! "1 have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. "1 have a dream today! "I have a dream that one day 'every valley shall be exalted and every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together." self-eviden- t, "This is our hope. This is our faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we shall be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing we will be free one day. And this will be the day. This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning, 'My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring. And if America is a great nation, this must become true. "So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire; let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York; let freedom ring from the Rockies of Colorado; let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that. Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia; let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain, Tennessee; let freedom ring from every hilltop and molehill of Mississippi From every mountainside, let freedom snow-cappe- d ring. "And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will all be able to speed up that day when all 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 lasL " |