'I Have A Dream'
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech in the hot summer of 1963, calling for the the enfranchisement of black Americans, is among the best speeches ever, and some experts have rated it the best speech of the 20th century.Watch it on YouTube'
Before he was the great orator of his time, Martin Luther King Jr. was a athlete and a trash talker. He loved baseball. He ran track and played basketball. And though he was small, he was on his high school football team and had a reputation as a talking trash to opponents during competition.
Who in contemporary American life best embodies the fulfillment of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream?
Is it the poltical activists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton ? Or the moguls like Oprah and Russell Simmons who have turned civil rights advances into booming economic opportunity. Or better still is it the politicians like Sen. Barack Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick who have somehow proved that race is no longer the overwhelmig issues black candidates confront.
Rep. John Lewis was at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement and was close to Martin Luther King, Jr. Listen to him talk about his first meetings with King and the beginnings of the Movement.
Then & Now:
War Protests Photo Gallery
As the country struggles with questions about how to end the war in Iraq, more and more parallels are being drawn with Vietnam. After a long struggle about how and whether he should get involved in the anti-Vietnam effort, King delivered a moving speech in New York in 1967, exactly one year before he died, calling on Americans to openly oppose the Vietnam war. He titled it, 'Time to Break The Silence.' While times have changed, King's opposition to the war had more to do with who we are as Americans than who were at war with, and in that regard, some of his argument then may readily apply now.
See Anti-War Protests
With excerpts from the speech