These are the word of Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister who was a driving force for racial equalities in the 1950's and 1960's. He organized a massive march on Washington DC, on August 28, 1963. His partners in the march include other religious leaders, labor leaders, and black organizers. They marched down the Washington Mall from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King evoked the name of Lincoln in his "I Have a Dream" speech, which is credited with mobilizing supporters of desegregation and prompted the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The next year, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
He dreamed the dream and many African Americans and Africans around the world started dreaming that same dream. Some have given up hope that the dream will come true and some still carry that dream. I was born 20 years after Martin Luther King, Jr declared his dream to the world. I became apart of the dream. Even though I was not born into slavery I was born into mental slavery, and I too began to dream.
Rosa Parks was arrested because she refuse to give up her seat on a Montgomery Bus to a white passenger. After she was arrested this is what she said "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in". she was tired of being second best. The Montgomery bus boycott was also the inspiration for the bus boycott in the township of Alexandria, Eastern Cape of South Africa which was one of the key events in the radicalization of the black majority of that country under the leadership of the African National Congress.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr a National Hero of Jamaica, a publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, Black nationalist, orator and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League was the first man of color to lead and develop a mass movement. He was the first man on a mass scale and level to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny. And make the Negro feel he was somebody.
Malcolm X, Booker T Washington, Nelson Mandela, and many more have fueled the dream, a dream that have been dreamed for decades. They have paved the way for us and generations to come. Black people have always been outcasts, not because we are unimportant but because we are strong. We have overcome so many obstacles, so many have died fighting the fight we are still fighting today.
Barack Obama born to a Black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas. He too had the dream and he too sought to make that dream a reality. He wants to make a change. Over the years we have seems the black race overcome and become dominant forces in societies. But never have we seems a black American President. Obama made that change. In his route to change he stated that "Now make no mistake: the change we need won't come easy or without cost. We will all need to tighten our belts, we will all need to sacrifice and we will all need to pull our weight because now more than ever, we are all in this together". He have given back hope to black poeple across the world.
I believe that the change was already here. I have seen black people made their mark in history. Barack Obama made it clear that we have always been the forerunners, he proved that we are more mighter a race than we think we are, more so he proved that dreams do come true. He made the dream a reality, a dream we have far to long been dreaming. A dream that have been the hope of our race.
I love history. I love to read about the past, a time when we were courageuos and brave. A time when we know how to fight for humanity. I have seen so many thing change in my 25 years in this world. I have witness my race rise to the top slowly but surely. The inevitable have come to past and I can say I have witness a major change for the black race. There has to be a first for everything and now a flame of hope burns brighter than ever before.
As Mandela once said "A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination".
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