Category: MLKJr
-
Forever Free
Halfway through the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. And so it was, more than 150 years ago this month, that every slave living in the Confederacy was declared free. Many of them, however, were unaware of it. How could they have known? They were behind enemy lines. Most couldn’t read. […]
-
People Get Ready
Curtis Mayfield, who would have celebrated his 74th birthday this weekend, wrote a rarity of a song most everyone in North America has heard: “People Get Ready.” By rarity, I mean its message, not its repetition, as it has been covered by everyone from Rod Stewart to the Neville Brothers (though my personal favorite is […]
-
The Dream Lives On
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech might be the finest piece of American oratory from the 20th century. And it almost never came to be. As King took the podium at the Lincoln Memorial that August day in 1963, advisors told him not to use his “dream” rhetoric as it was considered […]