MLK speech still a call to action
A half century is a long time in a young country, especially the socially, politically, culturally and economically dynamic country that is the United States.
So, today, 50 years after the Rev. Martin Luther King delivered his indelible "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial - which came a century after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation - that dynamism has indeed produced significant progress toward fulfilling that dream.
The March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs, during which King made his speech, clearly was a catalyst for the major civil rights legislation that soon followed - the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and others. Televised brutality by police against civil rights protesters, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy three months after the speech and President Lyndon F. Johnson's political courage and acumen coalesced into an actual legal scaffold to support federal enforcement of the nation's grandly stated but sporadically practiced ideals.
Now, 50 years out, that scaffold has had a positive impact, helping to diminish racism in housing, hiring, voting and other aspects of American life. Some of the Southern jurisdictions where civil rights protesters were brutalized have African-American public officials. President Barack Obama's two electoral victories speak eloquently to the progress.
Culturally, time also has had a positive effect. Race is less of an issue with each new generation. Social and economic integration have shown that familiarity can counter rather than breed contempt. Black citizens, students, workers and entrepreneurs have access to opportunities now that were unimaginable in 1963.
Social change never is linear, however. It occurs through fits and starts. Overt racism has become unacceptable legally and socially but racism lives and, like obscenity, you know it when you see it.
A half century after the Rev. King's electrifying speech, vigilance remains necessary and hard work, within minority communities and the society as a whole, remains to be done. The call on the 50th anniversary of the address is for continued effort.