Monday, January 21, 2013

No Longer a Dream

 
Regradless of your political leanings, you have to note the significance of today: President Barak Obama's Inaugural Celebration on MLK Day. Here's part of a spoken word piece that I wrote about King some years ago.
 
"Dr. King was as passionate as Malcom X, as smart as Cornel West, as outspoken as Sojourner Truth, as controversial as Booker T., and as courageous as a lion.  Although short in physical stature, like David the shepherd, he was tall in spiritual stature, like Paul the apostle.  Like Paul, he had experienced suffering, and like Paul, he had befriended suffering—made it his best friend.  Threatened almost daily, stabbed once, the victim of home bombings twice, Jailed 29 times, he continued to march to a different drum, to stride toward freedom, so that he and we could overcome.  Yes, he thought about giving up, but believed that the cross of Christ was his salvation, and that suffering would secure freedom. 
 
By any account he was a great man, but by all accounts he was just a man—“perfectly imperfected”—an example of greatness and weakness lying side by side —a leader of nations, but a cheater—on his doctoral thesis and on his wife?
 
Catapulted to fame due to his poetic Black preacher’s prose and stance for justice, he challenged our nation to believe what then seemed impossible—Black and White—equal and together.
 
His sun set prematurely, like Malcolm, at age 39, but his dream continues in you and in me, Chanté Laree, a descendant of a people enslaved and daughter of the dream."
 

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