 A Dream Deferred
Reprinted from the Smith Alumnae Quarterly, Spring 1989.
Yolanda King ’76’s visit to campus took place on January 26, 1989, as a part of Smith’s recognition of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the national holiday honoring him. Although many students had not yet returned for the second semester, a large and enthusiastic audience greeted her at John M. Greene Hall.
It is a real thrill to be back home. When I was here I was not as endeared to this institution as I am now. You learn in retrospect and appreciate as you move on. I was indeed shaped by my experience at Smith—it was the first time I had to struggle. It was the very first time I learned how to determine and focus very specifically on the things that I felt were important, to strategize and to learn how to go about getting them and making them happen. While it was painful then, I am truly thankful for that experience now.
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or, does it explode?
These words, penned by the poet Langston Hughes, are extremely appropriate as we gather together to celebrate, to commemorate, to salute and to be reinvigorated by the memories, the life, the work of Martin Luther King Jr.
We as Americans memorialize and honor symbols of heroic deeds done on the battlefields of war and violence. So should we honor those cosmic travelers who have given their lives for the struggle for peace and justice. We have thousands of monuments to men at war, at long last we have the opportunity to celebrate the life of a man of peace who was one of our own. This accomplishment is a moment of triumph—but not for Martin Luther King Jr., he wouldn’t have cared one way or other, his was a very self-effacing spirit. But it says something about the potential and possibility that he drew from America; it says something about what we one day can actually achieve. He made us look at ourselves, black and white, rich and poor, and we began to alter. We changed the condition of our society. As black people we threw off the feeling of inferiority that shackled us—we pulled ourselves up and demanded our god-given rights. Many white people were freed from their false sense of superiority, which blinded and distorted their true humanity.
It was an idealistic time, though short-lived, and we must never forget the sacrifices made to achieve the gains that resulted. In far too many instances we have forgotten, our memories have blurred and the problems of today are so complicated that yesterday is but a vague memory. Those of you who are students today were babies. Some of you in this audience were not even born when we were in the thick of the movement—were not even born when Martin Luther King Jr. left us. For you the movement may seem like ancient history. You didn’t have to deal with the ugly wounds of segregation—sitting on the back of the bus, the “white only” signs, the snapping dogs, the searing fire hoses; it really seems like misty images from a horror story that we may have perhaps read about or have seen somewhere on television. The Civil Rights Movement was not a mirage; it was not a documentary; it was not even a television special; it was live and in living color.
It should not surprise us that it was a woman who sparked the movement. If Rosa Parks had not chosen to stand up that day in December 1955 by remaining seated on that bus in Montgomery, we would not be here today celebrating the life of Martin Luther King Jr. But that was the incident that propelled him into leadership and ultimately triggered the ending of segregation in the South. The doors of educational and employment opportunities were opened and blacks, Hispanics, and women of all races streamed in on an unprecedented basis.
The Civil Rights Movement also set in motion the various movements for human rights which followed it, such as the women’s movement and the peace movement. Senior citizens organized, other groups organized because they saw, through the struggle of black Americans, that if they organized and came together they could bring about some change. It also served to trigger the anti-war movement, which ultimately ended our involvement in Vietnam.
 Indeed, this movement served to raise the consciousness of much of the nation and many parts of the world, and it finally brought the South into the 20th century. Progress indeed. But we can’t stop here, and unfortunately too many did stop. Many who benefited directly from the gains chose to rest on their laurels—chose to selfishly isolate themselves and fearfully hold on to what had been attained. Many college students and young people were really the vibrant force during the movement and their involvement made all the difference. But today young people have become laid back, forgetful I guess, of the tremendous sacrifices that were made to enable them, so many of them, to even afford to get away with being so laid back. Those who have stuck with the struggle, and there are many in every community and on every college campus across this country, are moving all the rest of us along. But they have had to react instead of act. They have been forced to wage defensive battles to hold on to the gains of previous decades as opposed to developing offensive strategy. And so for many it seems that we are treading water, that we are even slipping backwards.
The reality is that many people believed that with the elimination of law-enforced racial segregation equal opportunity for all would now be the order of the day. After all, we are an integrated society now, and all is well. In 1984 we witnessed a black man for the first time become a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. That same black man just this past year showed us that perhaps it’s not quite as far off as we thought when indeed we will have a society where most people judge you not by the color of your skin but by the content of your character. In 1984 we also witnessed President Ronald Reagan sign the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday bill. He didn’t want to do it—not even a little bit. Do not let anyone fool you about that one. It was a modern day miracle, an important, symbolic victory. But at the same time that we acknowledge these achievements we must also come to grips with the fact that we are still faced with a system that, even when President Carter was in office, was allowing about $22 billion for education while spending $158.7 billion for the Pentagon and related defense systems. Since President Reagan has come, and is now gone, those figures have swollen to gross proportions. It is estimated that the Pentagon is currently paying $1 billion a day, which translates to $41 million an hour or $700,000 a minute, on defense—and the perverted sickness of it all is that we still don’t really feel safe.
Now I am not advocating that we do not need any defense, but any country that considers itself civilized while setting as a national policy one that dictates that we spend more than ten times as much plotting ways to kill and to destroy life as we do to educate our young people, that country is toying with destruction. With this obvious example of misdirected priorities, maybe we should question why the assassinations, why the terrorism, why the crime, the violence that pervade so much of our daily life, so many of our communities. The answer is quite clear. It is no accident that wife and child abuse have risen in recent times and are occurring throughout this country; it is no accident that the personal kinds of violence that we read about and know about, even personally, are occurring. We are taking our direction from the top and it is filtering down into our everyday lives. In the American capitalist system your heart is where you put your money. If we have chosen to place so much of our heart into the pursuit of militarism, our priorities have become warped.
The growing tide of violence, which some people have named Rambomania, the glorification of war for its own sake, sadly begins in the cradle. For example, war toys are now a billion dollar industry with sales up to 600 percent since 1982. By age 16 the typical American child has watched 200,000 acts of violence on television. This association of war with fun, war with make believe, war with play, warps the imagination of our children and is desensitizing our whole society to the perilous consequences of using military force. The reality is that in this day we can destroy the world eight times over—now come on, isn’t that a bit absurd—once is all it’s going to take. We have to decide, enough of us, that there is another alternative, another choice and we must follow it, we must pursue it fiercely, as was the example of Martin Luther King Jr.
Because of our overemphasis on defense and preparation for war and our emphasis on profits first rather than people, we find in America that 33 percent of our population 18 years and older are marginally or functionally illiterate. We have one of the highest illiteracy rates of the industrialized countries in the world. We have one of the highest child mortality rates of any of the industrialized countries in the world for black children. It is more than three times that of white children, but for all children it is simply too high.
Out of thousands of occupations that exist, 80 percent of all women are employed in only about 25, primarily in clerical, health, teaching, retail sales and service jobs. These jobs are often low paying and offer little opportunity for advancement. Women who do enter nontraditional careers such as medicine, law, engineering, still take home lower paychecks than men who do the same work. In fact, women still average only 62 cents in wages in the same job for every dollar made by a man. If we look at pay equity on a global basis, the facts are more startling—while women compose 50 percent of the world’s population, we do 75 percent of the work, while only earning 10 percent of the wages. Moving back to America, we find that although it has gotten a little better there is still a tremendous income gap between blacks, browns and whites. There are 6 million more people living in poverty than there were eight years ago. It is estimated that 22 percent of all children living in America under the age of 18 are living below the poverty line—and for black children it is a staggering 49 percent. We are allowing, in some of our communities, 50 percent or 60 percent of our youths’ lives to go down the drain because they have no skills, they have no hope, and they don’t care. If we don’t come to grips with that particular reality it is going to erupt in ways that we have not seen yet. We have got to deal forthrightly and very honestly with those things that are corrupting us from the inside.
I have only touched the surface; so many injustices still remain, but you know them and, even if you don’t know them, you know about them. During the era of segregation a term was used to describe the racist separate system that was primarily intact in the South, although of course there were vestiges of it all across the rest of the country—it was called Jim Crow. Well, in 1989 I am pleased to say Jim Crow is dead, but as has been proven by incidents that happened in Forsyth County in Georgia, Howard Beach in New York, the community of Overton in Miami, just by cross burnings on college campuses, and by racial epithets being written on the walls of many of our college facilities. These incidents and so many more that are terrifying really, when we stop and think that they are still occurring in this country, point to the fact that while Jim Crow is dead his slightly more sophisticated first born son, J. Crow, Esquire, is alive and kicking. We as black people, we as women, we as humanity have not reached the promised land. We are still wandering around bumping into each other in the wilderness. The dream, that magnificent dream, pursued so fiercely by my father, is still only a dream. Racism, sexism, injustices, inequities of all shapes and sizes remain and we have to find a semblance of real peace, not the kind of peace where everything is wonderful on the surface but things are boiling underneath. I am talking about peace with justice. My father’s utterance rings persistently—either we will learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we will perish together as fools.
On this occasion as we pause to remember Martin Luther King Jr., we must also pause to recommit ourselves to his unfulfilled dream. We must refuse to let the dream be deferred. So now that he is “safely dead,” we with our eased consciences will teach our children that he was a great man, we will leave here tonight and go right back to our lives of nonchalant apathy, knowing all the while that the cause for which he lived is still a cause and the dream for which he died is still only a dream. Please, I beg of you let that not be said of you. Instead you must grab hold of the dream, you must let it fill your very being, you must find within it something that makes sense to you, something that you can do.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy of nonviolence was so misunderstood. If you practice nonviolence you may have to turn the other cheek sometimes and show your best side but you must not suffer in silence. Instead you speak out about brutality, against evil, against wrong in a clear and determined way. And most importantly you organize against that evil. That is what we have tried to do at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolence and Social Change, which is located in Atlanta, Georgia, with support groups around the country. My father’s last campaign involved bringing together poor people across racial and religious lines to dramatically demonstrate the widespread poverty that still exists in this, one of the richest countries in the world. He realized that the freedom to go, or sit, or eat anywhere you please meant nothing if you do not have the money to do any of these things. He called it the poor-people’s campaign to demand the right to work and to make a decent salary. That was in 1968. His famous, forever-quoted dream speech was delivered in 1963. (In fact there are many people in this world who think it’s Daddy’s only speech. It is the only one they ever got to hear.) “I have a dream, I have a dream that one day little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”
He knew in 1968 that while this was a beautiful symbol of hope and possibility, it indeed was only the beginning. For after they joined hands what then were they going to do? Yes, he was dreaming again of marching on Washington, but this time the intent was to stay there not just for a day, not just for speeches and singing but to engage in a campaign of massive civil disobedience to try and stop, nonviolently, the functioning of the national government until the cause of the poor became this nation’s first priority—until all people were guaranteed a decent job, at a decent income, until we stopped the killing of Asians abroad in the Vietnam war and turned to attend to the very desperate needs of our people within our shores. That was the last dream. And if you understand that dream, if you understand that for the last six months of his life Martin Luther King Jr. was not only talking about but actively organizing native Americans, Hispanics, poor whites, blacks, people from all across this nation who had for so long been denied; if you realize how threatening that was, perhaps you will understand why the bullet came, perhaps where it came from.
It is those two issues that my father was championing at the end of his days—our preoccupation with militarism and the widening gulf between the haves and the have nots. Those two issues lie at the core of virtually every injustice that remains. It really isn’t about blacks versus whites versus any of the ethnic divisions that used to pit people against each other. In the final analysis, when you look to the root of the problems that we are experiencing, it is not about racism or about sexism—really it is about greed. It is about a perverted need to be number one, to be all-powerful, to be omnipotent. No matter who or what it destroys, that’s what determined who gets what and how much. Does that mean racism and sexism don’t exist? Of course they do, they have been ingrained into the very fiber of so many of our institutions, but I am convinced they are merely symptoms and they have been used to keep a few people in control of most of the resources of the world while the rest of us fight over the remains. Six percent of the American population owns and controls 70 percent of the means of production. On the other hand are 35 million to 38 million Americans, the 15 out of 100 who live below the poverty line. It is not even a question of getting a piece of the American pie, for by the time the pie plate gets around to them, there is nothing left but crumbs. That is the challenge we face. Everyone cannot be a leader, a spokesperson, but there is something that everyone can do right here on this campus. I know this environment provided me with the opportunity to begin to hone my skills.
Colleges and universities that are serious about doing their share in ensuring that we do move toward the creation of a society where people respect diversity, and appreciate our differences, I think every campus, every college should institute a course that all students be required to take—it should be called Ethics Studies or Multicultural Diversity. Now I know that requirements are a problem here at Smith, but “encouraged to take” would be a lot better than where things are now. If we are really going to move toward that kind of sharing and that kind of respect for differences, we must understand a little more about each other. I think higher education has to play a very firm role in making sure, in a very structured way, that all students have at least one opportunity to be exposed. We cannot simply sit around and wait for something to happen or sit back and hope and pray that somebody will come along and deliver us from evil. I am reminded of a thought written by Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Perhaps there are those that think I am downright foolish to even stand here and honestly talk about the fact that we can build a society which genuinely nourishes life, where we human beings can actually live together in respect and justice. Perhaps it does seem like a rather lovely dream during a peaceful night’s sleep. But I for one, I choose to continue dreaming. Affirming once again with the poet Langston Hughes:
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly
I chose to dream and act on my dreams, following the example that my father taught. To live with this dream may be crazy, it may be foolish, but to live without it would be a nightmare. |
