It really has deep personal meaning.
My father was a sharecropper from Mississippi
who escaped the wrath of his boss man
and raised us on the south side of Chicago,
so he was very familiar with the dream
that King had on the footsteps of the Lincoln
Memorial.
I remember dad coming home--
he didn't go to the march,
but he had seen the march or something--
with tears in his eyes.
And he was not one prone to crying,
even on his deathbed he hardly broke a tear.
But there was something so meaningful
about this movement symbolized
in the incredible oratory of Martin Luther
King Jr.
But it was a movement.
It was a movement from the southern parts
of the country
to the north,
but it also wasn't simply vertical or northward.
It was eastward and westward
and, we now know, global.
I have a dream fifty years from this year...
What might it look like?
What do we need to begin doing?
What does it mean to be a drum major for justice,
a drum major for peace?
And how will we re-contextualize the vision?
These are simple and complex questions.
But part of it, I think, begins with these
personal
commitments for change,
for transformation in places that we already
know.
