Decades ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of 250,000 civil rights supporters in front of Lincoln memorial, and he preached about our country and its flaws, the challenge of the present and a future where “all God’s children” were free at last. Civil rights and segregation shape the way we understand the history behind the “I have a dream” speech.

“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.” (MLK) He is referring to Abraham Lincoln and the power of the Emancipation Proclamation, while also including a verse from the Bible Psalms 30:5 “For anger endureth but a moment; in his favor is life; weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh is the morning.” The “long night of their captivity” refers to the long-suffering years of negro slavery with which our ancestors struggled just so one day we as a nation could eat at the same table. “But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.” (MLK) Rev. King is stating that even though this is a so called “free nation or land of the free”, that Negros are not free.  They still had laws that prevented Negros from going certain places and doing certain things that white people could do. There were plenty of whites that disagreed with Martin Luther King’s speeches, especially this speech, because they feared that this one negro man was becoming too powerful, maybe even more powerful that the president at the time.

Rev. King continues, “This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” He is alluding to the Declaration of Independence and that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (The Declaration of Independence). The emphasis is that statement that ALL MEAN are created equal: not just whites or black or whatever the race might be. Although people ignored, ridiculed, and criticized what he said and stood for, the fact remained that Rev. King was telling the truth and supporting his claim with historic documented facts. Rev. King also states to his audience, “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” He is saying that just because we are being threated a certain way, let us not try to find revenge or try to get even, because that will not rectify the wrongdoings. He was right because we as a nation are so committed to seeking revenge on others that we forget the principle of what we are pursuing. He also quotes “My country, ‘tis of thee.” “This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” (MLK) He is vocalizing his hopes that one day all of God’s children will stand together shoulder to shoulder holding hands singing the song that was written in 1832 by Samuel F. Smith. And finally, Rev. King says, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" He is referencing the old Negro spiritual slaves used to sing after crossing the Underground Railroad for freedom.

W.E.B. DU Bois was the first black recipient of a history degree from Harvard University he also became the director of publicity and research for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded in 1909. In 1903 he published a book called The Souls of Black Folks, he argued for equality he wanted a curriculum of liberation not subordination. He helped campaign to end the Jim Crow segregation but first he targeted the inequality in education. By doing so Virginia and some other southern colleges adopted a policy of giving scholarships to black students to attend professional and graduate schools outside the state even thought it was rejected by the U.S Supreme Court in 1938.  In October 1938, the NAACP filed suit over the fact that black teachers in Norfolk were paid less the whiter teachers. W.E.B DU Bois did everything he could to help his race just like Rev. King, both men fought for what they believed in and not just settling for what the white people offered.

From Jim Crow to Civil Rights by Jonathan Rosenberg, talks about the relationship between the supreme court and the quest for racial justice and how the Brown v. Board of Education and other supreme court running didn’t transform American society’s as profoundly as “changes in the social and political context” influenced the Court. He also states that “in his analysis, Brown might have come out differently but for a variety of developments during and after world war 2” and how some key factors helps reshape and reform American politics, society, and attitudes about race.

  In the Brown V. Board of Education article, it talks about how “segregation of whites and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children.” And how the impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law and how the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. It also states that “segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system.”  

Some people today still disagree with Rev. Martin Luther King’s Jr. method as the sole spokesman for African Americans. He was one of many people who stood up for his race.  We as African Americans have had plenty of people who stood for what they believed in, such as Rosa Parks not giving up her seat on the bus, Thurgood Marshall’s role in the influential “Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka” case, and many more undocumented heroes that contributed to the civil rights movement. My view on Rev. King is the same as it was when I was a kid; he is the most influenceable black man in history, and there will never be another Martin Luther King Jr. this is how Civil rights and segregation shape the way we understand the history behind the “I have a dream” speech.   
