I was born and raised in Washington D.C., and although city schools were closed, I did not march to the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. I did not stand with many thousands who cheered as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech.
Neither did my family members or friends. We didn't march and we didn't stand witness because we depended on the government--The Establishment--for our livelihoods. We did not want to be marked as "civil rights activists" at a time when good jobs for "Negroes" were hard to find.
Indeed, the economic survival of my mother, father, grandmother, aunt and uncle depended on official Washington--politicians, Congressional staff members, and lobbyists who stayed in various hotels and dined at the restaurants in and around the city. My father was a Washington D.C. Park Police Officer while my uncle was employed as a butler at the White House. Before my uncle retired he served four U.S. presidents, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon. My mother worked as a maid for various major hotels. It was natural for "Washingtonians" (as D.C. residents were called) to avoid politics or the civil rights movement under the leadership of Dr. King because of the fear of retaliation from employers who were against the struggle for civil rights.
So my family members and I crowded around our small black-and-white television on that August day and rejoiced in the possibility that the Dream of Dr. King would one day come true. I was inspired, and my family members cheered when Dr. King proclaimed: "This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning: My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing." We rejoiced as Dr. King assured us that "when this happens, when we allow freedom to 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!"
There is no doubt in my mind that the 1963 march on Washington was the high point of Dr. King's movement for civil rights in America. There have been valleys, too. Five years after the gathering at the Capitol, Dr. King delivered his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" address at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. "We've got some difficult days ahead," he told the crowd in Memphis. "But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop."
Overwhelmed by emotion, Dr. King concluded his remarks by saying: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
An assassin's bullet killed Dr. King the next day--April 3, 1968.
It was more than 23 years before President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a federal holiday to honor Dr. King, an honor first observed on January 20, 1986. Six years later, President George H. W. Bush declared the observance of the Dr. Martin Luther King Day holiday shall be on the third Monday of January each year. King is the first and only African American in whose name the U.S. Congress of the United States has passed legislation establishing a national federal holiday. This year, the holiday falls just one day prior to the January 20, 2009 inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the first African American elected President of the United States.
During Obama's election-night victory speech on November 4 at Grant Park in Chicago, the newly minted president-elect offered a new perspective on the Dream of Dr. King. He said that now is "America's chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes We Can."
This inauguration day I will not be with my family members and friends who still live and work in my hometown of Washington D.C. I will be with them in spirit, though, all the way from California, where my wife, children and grandchildren will gather with me around our big-screen color television set in our living room.
I will rejoice as the first African American, Barack Hussein Obama, places his hand on the bible and is sworn in as President of the United States.
I will be in good company.
Ron Ellerbe is editor of the Hub City News.
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