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50 Years Between Martin L. King and Trayvon Martin: What are the Lessons Learned?
By Dr. Padmore Agbemabiese
There’s hardly a person, in this world, who hasn’t read or heard the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” and has not been moved or inspired by it. King’s hope was to help mold a nation, so that a person could be judged according to the content of his or her character, and not
according to the superficial characteristics of the color of his or her skin. Fifty years after that speech, is
there a link between Dr. King's fight, the Trayvon Martin’s case and the ongoing battle by citizens of
color for racial equality in educational, social, political and economic arenas of the world? It has been
fifty years since the iconic “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, but what are the gains and lessons
learned since then? By the way, was the dream a nightmare or one of those dreams to be deferred?
Whatever it may be, the fiftieth anniversary of that speech also marked the fiftieth anniversary of the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas; it marked the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of
the Emancipation Proclamation and the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of the16th Street Baptist
Church in Birmingham, Alabama. What a divine coincidence. Much as we all celebrate with pomp the
Dream Speech, now and then, and engage in rituals of every kind on King’s birthday, we have to pause
and ask ourselves whether after this famous speech did Dr. King die with a joyful heart believing he has
saved mankind from the morass of inequalities, and ensured that each person of color is assured an
education that will uplift him or her from the debris of poverty and social degradation? Did he die
believing he has paved the way that enables every person of color an opportunity to gain an awareness or
an education that would help him or her to sift and weigh evidence around them, to discern the truth from
the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction or he died with a broken heart?
Whatever the conclusion we gauge from this iconic speech, some historians, sociologists and others may
ask, what are the gains of the Dream Speech as we celebrate, each year, Dr. King’s birthday with
speeches and elaborate breakfasts? We may even pause with every citizen of color living in the ghettos, the projects and the ‘hood’—people who do not know where and when their next meal will show up, and ask them if they consider race and racism which prompted the speech still immovable and odious stigmas,
not only in America, but also, in the entire Black world? And we can possibly question whether Dr. King’s 1963 vision of an America where his children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” will ever become a reality.
A recent report by UCLA’s Civil Rights Project confirms that Black students today are as segregated from white students as they were in the 1960s. According to the study, one out of every six Black and
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resources, and under-qualified teachers. The failure to address separate and unequal schooling systems
helps explain why only 10% of Black male 8th graders are reading on grade level, and why only 50% of
Black boys are graduating from high school on time. In today’s information economy, a college degree is
increasingly necessary for middle-class employment, as global competitiveness relies on a highly trained
workforce. Yet, in the nearly 60 years since Brown vs. the Board of Education, the black-white gap in
college completion has only widened. One hundred-and-fifty years after the Emancipation Proclamation,
there remain two Black Americas. There is the Black underclass, “new slaves” caught in the revolving
door of poverty, despair, mis-education, and incarceration. Paramount is the worsening material
conditions for many citizens of color which is due to the obliteration of action programs meant to level
the playing field in employment and education. King’s dream of a self-sufficient, Black working and
middle-class person, whose struggle and merit would result in full inclusion into American society, has
yet to become a reality.
On the surface, some people will argue that the dream is being fulfilled, because we have the first Black
President in America. Some may say the March on Washington produced a number of "signposts": events
and trends that have shaped the civil rights struggle and today's racial landscape. Some will argue that
citizens of color have seen progress, but they easily forget there are uncountable regressions too. It is true
some have seen triumphs while others are met with disappointments, and there have been great leaps
forward much as there are racial stalemates in every human situation. Courts and government policies
have at times boosted their progress but at other points they have been a millstone around their necks. So,
the road is not a levelled playing field. Hence, beyond this seemingly progress, just beneath the surface,
have the huge disparities in society changed, socially, economically, educationally and in other areas? Or
are the structures that propped up these isms still existing as invisible walls in all arenas of human
encounter? Recently, Julianne Malveaux, a political commentator and economist, and a former president
of Bennett College for Women noted “Race is America’s sticking point. Nobody wants to deal with it, but
it is what it is. Both black and white people are uncomfortable with it, and until both sides can become comfortable dealing with it, nothing will change.”
Fifty years after the iconic speech of Dr. King and the election of the first Black President in America,
people of color world-wide are still living in the 21st century in a state of despair and even panic. By
certain ironies of history, they were stamped into directions they did not intend to follow. And now,
breathless and quite dazed, they have arrived at a point where they seem to have lost, not only a sense of
where they are or should be going, but also knowledge of where they were before the stampede. They are
trapped in a state of stasis, in what can be described as "a culture of survival”—not one of achievers,
socially, educationally, and economically, but that of dependents and survivors of a sort. How can citizens
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confront dimensions of themselves, something they did not know were there? How can they prosper when
there is something of mystery carved into every tombstone in all graveyards of the world and enshrined in
every monument and in every anthem to derail their efforts to be good citizens of the world?
W. E. B. DuBois has been proved correct in his prediction that the major problem of the 20th century
would be the problem of the color-line. But, that actually is not the case today. For peoples of color all
over the world, the major problem of the 21st century is the problem of the line between death and life.
No people, however resilient, can continually live in a culture of survival; the only guarantee for a
people's existence is a qualitative improvement in their conditions of life, socially, politically,
educationally and economically. This is what the totality or holistic human development should mean.
But this is not so when we try to evaluate life, fifty years after the iconic “Dream” Speech. The survival
culture I talk about here deals more with immediate human needs rather than long- term needs. Simply, it’s about butter and bread. The on-going search for food, shelter, clothing, material artifacts, social status in a given human society have absorbed energies of people of color on a day-to-day basis. As a result,
there exists very little time for serious development, socially, economically and educationally. And the
most hurting aspect of this is the continual denial of opportunities that has held captive every genuine
human development of peoples of color. How can the hurricanes of denial be tamed or contained after the
fiftieth anniversary of the Dream Speech? The culture of survival breeds people who riot rather than plan
to change their precarious state of being. Recent developments in Egypt and other places of the world are
examples that readily come to mind. The culture of survival develops people who re-act rather than act,
beg rather than take, play rather than study and follow rather than lead.
The historical and contemporary dilemmas in which peoples of color find themselves reflect a crisis of
consciousness; or rather a crisis of lack of consciousness—consciousness about what actually happened to
them before the iconic Dream speech and the factors that prompted it, consciousness of the ultimate
intensions of "partners" in various abortive programs to prevent them from realizing their individual
dreams. To deal with this crisis of consciousness, people of color must first of all turn their full attention
to that most manifest and coherent power of education which guarantees social mobility, economic
development and political expediency. The havoc wrecked by race and racism has resulted in an endless
fragmentation of the psyche of persons of color; it has left them with a geography of scars and a
tormented remembrance of the dignity they once embodied since creation and before the advent of
slavery.
A people once enslaved, they say, are too often too willing to be a people self-enslaved. To what extent,
has the fifty years after the Dream Speech, the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and
the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of the16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, ushered in a
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Are they still crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination in schools and
community places? Do they still live on a lonely island of poverty whiles around them is a vast ocean of
material prosperity? Are they still languishing in “the projects” and exiled from prosperity and dramatized
in courtrooms, on TVs and in newspapers as “commodities” in shameful conditions. Where is the
American Dream, the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that all men and
women are guaranteed? Or has the Bank of Justice gone bankrupt with "insufficient funds?
The tenets of Dr. King’s Dream Speech are impossible to capture on a single page or digest in a single
day. When you consider America’s long history from the time Dr. King made his Dream Speech to today,
you will be dismayed that those same demons which prompted the speech still haunt us today, but as
invisible walls. As we celebrate Dr. King’s Birthdays, there is the fierce urgency to pause and engage
ourselves in what makes real the promises of democracy. Can we rise from the dark and desolate valley of
discrepancies and segregation in our social, educational and economic environments, and climb to the
sunlit path of racial justice? Can we lift our nation from the quick-sands of racial injustices, in all walks of
life, to the solid rock of brotherhood and sisterhood, and kinship? Can we move from the sweltering
summer heats that is burning children of citizens of color in educational establishments to an invigorating
autumn of freedom and equality in their pursuit of the American dream? When will the bright day of
justice emerge for citizens of color as mothers are bereft of sons and daughters and communities mourn
the loss of future leaders? Can everyone be allowed to stand on the warm threshold which leads into the
palace of justice where they could drink from the fountains of love and equality? Can we achieve the
gains of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech to enjoy equal respect and be
treated as humans? Yes we can if our schools are equipped to better themselves at teaching young
students how to think critically and the young students and their families learn that education is a crucial
key to social mobility and the creation of a better life. In a world that is poorly balanced, education can go
a long way towards being an effective equalizer. Only this can sustain the gains of Dr. King’s 1963 vision
