Has Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to end racial discrimination and achieve true equality for all citizens in our country become reality? Americans have pondered that question and offered their analysis in the days leading up to today's 50-year anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington.
It's appropriate, then, that people in Erie ask themselves the same question and reflect on how conditions have improved for minorities here in the last half century and what remains to be done.
In Dana Massing's story today about King's "I Have a Dream" speech, Erie residents remember the hope that King's words instilled in people across the country -- hope that people would look beyond skin color, hope that minorities would have the same opportunities in education, housing and jobs that the majority took for granted.
"It was a great speech for the time because it gave the people hope," said the Rev. Kary Williams Jr., pastor of St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church. "It's still great today because people still have that hope."
King, a Baptist minister whose father and grandfather had also been pastors, once said that the most segregated hour in America fell at 11 a.m. on Sunday, when people attended church services. Local African Americans remember when they were asked to worship separately from white Christian churches.
In his Washington speech, King alluded to the book of Isaiah from the Old Testament to make his case for racial equality. "I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together," he preached. How often do black and white pastors and congregations in Erie join today to tackle Erie's many social problems?
"Let us not wallow in the valley of despair," King exhorted the peaceful crowd of 250,000, as he referred to the Deep South and the "slums and ghettos of our northern cities." What would King say to the young people in Erie's inner city today, where a culture of violence, guns and drugs flourishes? Would he ask why the gains that Erie made in the 1970s in hiring minorities as educators and public safety officers have slowed? Would he wonder where our institutions reflect our African-American population, which has grown from about 1 percent in the 1940s to 16.8 percent today.
Decades ago, minorities moved north to Erie from the segregated South and landed good jobs at Erie's manufacturing plants. Many of those jobs have disappeared. When will we talk about ways to reduce the unemployment rate in Erie's poorest neighborhoods, where residents don't have easy access or transportation to the jobs that exist outside the city's boundaries?
King's dream wasn't for himself, and he didn't articulate his dream for just one race. "Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!" he exclaimed. And from the shores of Lake Erie, too.