Traverse City Record-Eagle

Our Views

EDITORIAL

The issue: Today is MLK Jr. Day

Our view: It's time to recall his words

 

January 16, 2012

Martin Luther King Jr.'s words still ring through ages

On Aug. 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of the most famous orations of his or any era.

What is now known as the "I Have a Dream" speech lasted 17 minutes and was delivered during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom before an estimated 200,000 civil rights supporters.

The excerpts below are particularly poignant today, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

I 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 ... This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will 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 that we will be free one day.

... (T)his 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 to be a great nation, this must become true.

And 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 heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped 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 of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, 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 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!

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