Jan 19 was Martin Luther King Jr Day. Brenda Benedict visited his memorial in DC and comes away wondering if we’ll move closer to his dream.
I get goose bumps every time I see or hear snippets of Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have A Dream” speech. This speech was part of the syllabus of a public speaking elective class that I took back in college. Ranked “the top American speech of the 20th century in a 1999 poll of scholars of public address,” like many, I was and still am awed by how this gifted orator used rich and riveting language to underscore the sorry state of civil rights in the United States in the 1960s. And to think that that oft-replayed portion was ad libbed!