America's Insufficient Funds

Dr. King with Jackie Robinson

As we reflect today on America’s tardiness in fully implementing the God-given rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, here are a handful of my favorite excerpts from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.  He delivered it on the footsteps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963.

“One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. . .”

“It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’”

“We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.”

“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.”

“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.”

And of course . . .

“When we let freedom 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!”