We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
Ask most people to name when those words were spoken, and they may say the Declaration of Independence. They are not wrong. Thomas Jefferson did pen them on that historic parchment that was sent to a king as America’s bid for freedom.
But that was written. While the sentence was no doubt used by many over the next 190 years or so, it is inextricably knitted into the fabric of the most famous speech of one of the nation’s most gifted orators. It is the set-up for Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream.
It is a string of words with power and scope that show simultaneously the grasp of the nation and the reach of a people.
Read them with Jefferson’s flourish and they speak of high ideas that easily could have ended in a noose as high treason. How dare you tell your king that he has no right to govern you? What right have you to break away, to form your own country, to declare yourself separate and apart from the kingdom that gave birth to the colonies? People fought and died to make the words ring true.
But read them in King’s reverberating, resonating preacher’s voice and they take on a different tenor: both plea and a refusal to plead.
His dream was not about conquest or separation. It was about equality and unity. It was sitting at the same table. It was being judged on the same scale. It was believing in a day when race does not divide us. It was not a threat. It was a promise that he believed we could see come true someday.
“With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day,” he said that August day in 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial.
King picked up Jefferson’s words so many years later, continuing a journey left incomplete at the birth of our nation. May it not take another 200 years to bring King’s dream to fruition.
