The young woman, Liz, in the novel Song Yet Sung uses every shred and fiber of courage and ingenuity she has to escape the brutal world of slavery, a world in which anyone with African blood and no papers can be leashed to a post as someone's property. As a dreamer who prophesies the future of her people, she dreams of another dreamer, one who will live in an unknown generation far into her future, one who will move a sea of people, black and white together, with his words and his vision.
This future dreamer tells the people his dream about the generations of his future, generations he will not live to see, generations in which no one will be judged by skin color but only by character, generations who will live the fulfillment of the dream that America had of itself at its beginning, the dream of being a just and equitable society.
That dream has yet to be fulfilled. But we are now glimpsing its unfolding, which in two days' time will be recognized and celebrated across the nation and in communities around the planet.
In the November 17 issue of The New Yorker, there's an article titled "The Joshua Generation." The title refers to the son of Moses. Moses, the great archetypal leader of the Bible, the prophet who led the exodus out of slavery, never made it to the Promised Land with his people. It was Joshua, his son and successor, who eventually led them there and presided over their settling in the fruitful land that God had promised them. The implication of the title is that Obama and his peers are the Joshua Generation, completing the trek to the Promised Land that their Moses, Martin Luther King, Jr., had begun.
In this article there's a story….
It takes place on August 28. In a few short hours Obama would appear before 75,000 people in the Mile High Stadium in Denver. He was in his hotel room running through his speech, working out any remaining awkward phrasing, smoothing his delivery. There were just three people in the room—his strategist, David Axelrod; his speechwriter, Jon Favreau; and the teleprompter operator.
Obama came up upon what was actually a very understated passage toward the end of the speech that references the historic moment on August 28, 1963, when King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before a sea of 250,000 people and declared, "I have a dream!"
Obama got to this passage in the speech and just stopped short. His voice contracted. This man who was always so composed had to stop and take a few calming laps around the room because he just couldn't get out the words, "45 years ago today."
The historical significance of Obama's candidacy had always been there, but they had been working so hard for so long in such an extremely strange and intense environment, and all along they had taken the position that Obama's skin color was not going to be a focus of his message or how he identified himself or how he handled his campaign.
Somehow, it wasn't until this moment, practicing his speech in his hotel room, recalling the young preacher from Georgia and his dream, that Obama felt it. The resonance that connected them, that connected him to the generations of those who suffered and survived and found the strength and courage to fight for their citizenship.
He felt the connection, to the great protest march on Washington that had called forth King's prophetic dream, and the how words of that prophesy had continued to ring through all the years and all the ongoing struggle, and how this moment echoed an answer—this moment, when this fairly young African American man would step out before another sea of people to accept the democratic candidacy for the American presidency, and, although he couldn't be sure of it yet, would soon win the presidency itself.
We heard earlier a passage from Eric Dyson's biography of King, I May Not Get There with You. This is a very rich portrait that makes a case for why King is America's greatest citizen to date, without shying away from all the shades and shadows that made the man and his legacy so complicated.
King's legacy is complicated by the flaws and failures of his life and character. And it's complicated by the ways that his views evolved throughout his career. In the years before his short life was ended he grew so radical that few had the courage to follow him.
Dyson spends some time on the "I Have a Dream" speech, but he's very critical of what he feels is a history of misappropriating King's words.
Dyson writes:
In ways that King could never have imagined, indeed in a fashion that might make him spin in his grave—"I Have a Dream" has been used to chip away at King's enduring legacy. One phrase has been pinched from the speech to justify assaults on civil rights in the name of colorblind policies. Moreover, we have frozen King in a timeless mood of optimism that later, that very year, he grew to question…. King packs centuries of pain and possibility into nineteen minutes [making] brevity a servant of justice…. [He] intended that day not simply to detail a dream but to narrate a nightmare.
That day, King described and confronted the brutal, living realities that drove the March on Washington in the first place. Dyson points out that the language he uses to expose the horror of racism is as beautiful as the language of his dream, but the passages that express anger and pain and that demand justice remain relatively unknown because they are rarely quoted. How often do school children study the passage:
This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality…. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.
How often do we dwell on his phrases "vicious racists," "police brutality," and "chains of discrimination," or remember that he exhorted us to comprehend "the fierce urgency of now" and not succumb to "the luxury of cooling off" or "the tranquilizing drug of gradualism."
As a nation we have given King a halo and prefer only to remember his dream and not his bitter nightmare. Dyson is right that we have heard the most uplifting passages so many times that we falsely imagine we know this speech and have grown unable to hear it in its full integrity, if we ever were able to.
Dyson suggests that we put "I Have a Dream" aside for 10 years. Putting it aside may interrupt the misappropriation of his words. It may compel us to study his other speeches, perhaps most importantly his later ones. Later, when he was increasingly disappointed with the intractable nature of the unconscious racism of whites. Later, when he started to get to the dark heart of poverty. Later, when he saw the links that chain poverty, racism, and militarism together, and began to alienate his former supporters.
I was recently honored to have a conversation with Rabbi Arthur Waskow, founder of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, an organization dedicated to inter-religious and international peace, justice, and environmental efforts. In anticipation of the Martin Luther King holiday, he was promoting study circles that would bring people together to grapple with King's speech, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," which he delivered at Riverside Church in New York City in April 1967.
It's an extremely prescient speech. Few at the time were ready for it. And in it, King takes positions that would directly confront the kind of culture and policies embraced by the outgoing administration.
But perhaps we are coming into a time where the deep connections that join humanity to itself, and join humanity to the earth, are growing clearer. Perhaps we're coming to a time when our national and international leadership will begin to acknowledge how war is driven, at least in part, by materialism, and how poverty serves the war industry and the schemes of despots. And maybe our leadership will begin to seek relationships of mutual learning and cooperation with other nations, rather than thrust our world view and economy upon them.
And maybe, in our own nation, we will begin to understand how to truly live the core vision of our founders and that dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., the dream of justice, equality and democracy that has for so long remained unfulfilled.
In his victory speech, Obama said:
The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep…. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you—we as a people will get there.
These words are of course an echo of King's words from the last speech he gave:
"I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!"
But I heard another echo in Obama's words, though I don't know whether or not it was intended. In 1971, the Ghanaian drummer Sol Amarfio, of the Afro-Caribbean band Osibisa, wrote the song "Woyaya—We Are Going."
We are going—heaven knows where we are going,
but we know within.
And we will get there—heaven knows how we will get there,
but we know we will.
It will be hard, we know, and the road will be muddy and rough,
but we'll get there.
The song was later taken up by other freedom singers, including the six African-American women of the wonderful singing group "Sweet Honey in the Rock."
It seems to weave together the dream of freedom shared by many generations and populations: all those who were taken from their homelands and sold into slavery around the world, the struggles of South Africans against apartheid and other African peoples who were oppressed on their own lands by colonization, the African-American experience of slavery, and the civil rights movement of the 20th century.
When I heard Obama say, "The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep … but we will get there," I could not help wondering if he knew this song and wanted to communicate those connections.
Let's join our voices now and sing, Woyaya—we will get there.