Excerpted from homily presented by Ken Germanson, Feb. 5, 2023 before the Community of the Living Spirit,
a nondenominational congregation based in Waukesha WI:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
“I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., March on Washington, Aug. 28, 1963
This year marks the 60th Anniversary of the famed 1963 March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s remarkable “I Have a Dream” speech. Already, the speech has become one of the most memorable in U.S. History, rivaling in greatness and inspiration Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Patrick Henry’s “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech, and John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address.
In another great speech, George Washington placed upon the citizens of this young nation in 1789 the curse of “exceptionalism” that many persons believe makes our nation special and supreme in the world. He said in the memorable First Inaugural Address that fate “has been pleased to favor the American people with opportunities for deliberating in perfect tranquility, and dispositions for deciding with unparalleled unanimity on a form of government for the security of their union and the advancement of their happiness.” He was saying that this nation would be an experiment in democracy that could revolutionize the practice of self-government to work for the welfare of ALL its citizens. And now, 234 years later, we must ask: has our nation failed in living up to his lofty explanations?
All of these speeches force us to reflect upon the special place that our nation rests upon the world of nations.
Think about it: Patrick Henry’s speech summoned the revolutionaries to have the courage to challenge the superior British army in order to establish our nation; at Gettysburg, Lincoln reaffirmed that the carnage of the Civil War may have been necessary to reinforce the fact that our nation is “of the people, by the people, and for the people;” and JFK reminded us that we must not expect that the country exists to do for us, but that we must do the best for our nation.
And in 1963, just three months before President’s assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. summoned us to continue the dream of a democratic nation dedicated to equality, both socially and economically.
Now 60 years later, the legacy promised by Patrick Henry, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Dr. King is being challenged as it has ever been. Is the exceptionalism of the United States of America a myth? Is Dr. King’s dream just that, a dream, from which we awake to a morning of fear, horror and disgust?
Dr. King’s dream of seeing a white child in Alabama walking hand-in-hand with a black child has – for me – always been the symbol of a utopia that we have yet to achieve . . . it’s been an image that has always been most motivating for me.
In many ways, of course, that marvelous image of sisterhood and brotherhood has been realized. We do indeed see black, white and brown children playing together – but truly that’s not the norm. In high school cafeterias kids still gather into racial enclaves; black kids still play with black kids and so on. Whites marry blacks more often now, but it’s still exception . . . and the children of those marriages aren’t always treated fairly.
Jobs are more integrated now . . . or are they? Check it out: don’t you more often see black or brown men (or women) bussing tables in a restaurant while the waiter is white? We see segregation in job hierarchy everywhere, don’t we. Black players dominate the ranks of the NFL, but their teams are most likely to be coached and managed in the front office by white men. And so that’s America’s job market.
Where do we live? Don’t we still tend to live in neighborhoods dominated by people of our own race.
A lot of this segregation – if not most – is caused by economics. The earnings of black and Hispanic workers are – on the average – 20% less than white workers. Housing prices and rents in decent neighborhoods are far too high for these workers of color. Young workers of color enter the workforce with fewer years of education, or with an inferior level of learning experiences . . . thus dooming their earning potential for years to come . . . and relegating their children to futures fin jobs with low wages and lousy advancement potential.
It’s a usually a never-ending cycle of poor expectations.
This sorry state of affairs has persisted – and in many cases may have gotten worse – throughout American history. The promise of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution and Dr. King’s dream have yet to be realized.
That’s why it is timely today – at the beginning of Black History Month – to look back to the 1963 March on Washington when Dr. King gave his famous speech. The Dream speech is well-remembered, but Dr. King’s remarks were only one part of an otherwise memorable day . . . his words in fact did not reflect the real goal of the day . . . and that was to call for economic justice for ALL.
The March was organized by A. Philip Randolph, founder and longtime President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Bayard Rustin, an activist closely allied with America’s labor unions. Much of the support came from labor unions, mostly the United Auto Workers, whose Caucasian President Walter Reuther was a major speaker. (Incidentally, in the early 1960s, many unions still practiced racism in their ranks.)
Most notably the event was called “The March for Jobs and Freedom,” thus highlighting the key purpose of the occasion. In fact, in many other of his speeches, Dr. King recognized the need for economic justice for black workers as necessary to key full justice.
Today, we need to understand, as Martin Luther King understood, that the underpaid and exploited white worker is in the same boat with the underpaid and exploited black, Hispanic or native American worker. Unfortunately, there are those who would try to separate the fortunes of the lower-income white worker from her or his co-workers of color . . . and they’ve succeeded in doing that. Witness how the white working class male vote has increasingly gone to Republicans, who largely take on issues that hardly benefit workers and their families. Repeatedly, I think, they vote against their own well-being – at least as far as the economics go.
Republicans have discovered that racist arguments feed into the fears of white working class and rural Americans, blaming “them” and “those people” for their poor economic situation. The non-college-educated white man between the ages of 34 and 54 today is actually less well-off than his counterpart was a few decades earlier; only one in ten, for instance, belong to a union, where their economic fortunes might be higher. Weekly earnings of a white college graduate in 2021 according to BLS hit a median of $1,673, while those with only a high school degree earned $940 a week and the dropouts but $691. Is it any wonder that suicide rates of non-college-educated men keep going up and they’re dying at a faster rate than any other age bracket.
Thus Dr. King’s message was not only to boost Black citizens, particularly working people, but to economically boost ALL workers. He saw that poverty in the white community would become an insidious infection that would doom forever any chance that his dream of white and black children walking hand-in-hand would ever come true.
Despite the racism that persisted in many of America’s unions at the time, Dr. King saw in the union movement the best hope of realizing economic justice for all workers. Sadly, because of unfair labor laws and lackluster union leadership in many cases, the number of workers in unions today has dropped from approximately 33% in the 1950s to under 10% today … and less than 7% in the private sector. Thus, labor’s power to right these economic wrongs has dropped.
So, the question today is: how can we fulfill Dr. King’s dream if we cannot figure out a way to bring economic equality among ALL of America’s families? Can we revitalize the labor movement or must we find new ways to attain economic justice … and along with it full equality for all citizens in all facets of life in order to make Dr. King’s dream become reality?
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