OU professor reflects on 'I have a dream' speech

Aug. 27—In commemoration of the 60-year anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, a University of Oklahoma professor is encouraging discourse to understand what the Civil Rights figure meant as he spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in the nation's capital.

Jermaine Thibodeaux, assistant professor of African and African American Studies, 60 years out, said scholars see the speech as a carillon bell, warning the nation that the state of the nation was on fire.

"What the speech and March on Washington does, is it brings the issues that are dogging the people to the seat of power in the country, and it lays bare many of the nation's transgressions in a productive way," Thibodeaux said.

He said lofty ideas are the bedrock of the nation, and people at the time had to pay attention to whether the American government was living up to its promises to protect all people who live within its boundaries.

Thibodeaux said the speech sent a powerful enough message that it emboldened the U.S. Legislature to draft bills to create a more equal society.

The March on Washington and "I have a Dream Speech" took place Aug. 28, 1963.

Less than one year later on July 2, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination in public places. On Aug. 6, 1965, he signed the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting, and on April 11, 1968, he signed a law that prohibits discrimination concerning the sale, rental and financing of houses based on race.

"I think why the speech is resonating with a lot of people this season is it's an acknowledgment of people paying closer attention to history and how bleak things seem for Americans, especially Black Americans, people of color, and marginalized people," he said. "There is a realization that we've come pretty far along, but over the last couple of years, we've seen a retrenchment of some of the hallmarks that King and Civil Rights pioneers fought for."

Gerrymandering and restricting those who can vote are two examples, he said, of legislation that creates inequality that disparages Black Americans.

In Georgia, lawmakers made it a crime to provide food and water to those standing in lines. Multiple reports have indicated that polling locations in Black parts of the state experienced the longest waiting lines.

The ACLU has claimed that states have purged voting rolls to disenfranchise voters, and many of these purges are targeted at Black communities.

"A single purge can stop up to hundreds of thousands of people from voting. Often, voters only learn they've been erroneously purged when they show up at the polls on Election Day and it's too late to correct the error,"

Thibodeaux said of greatest concern are voting rights.

"Some of those gains are being stripped right before our very eyes, and this is something that predates the Trump administration," he said. "We've seen voting rights constantly under attack."

He said he hopes remembering the speech, this year, will remind people to take action.

"We come from a very rich inheritance in this country, and if anything, that speech can galvanize more folks to put pressure where it would, in many ways, effectuate some sort of change," he said.

Thibodeaux said he wants people to do their homework and better understand King's "I Have a Dream" speech through his own eyes, or the eyes of Black people at the time, which requires them to better understand that part of history.

He said many lawmakers have misrepresented his speech, especially the line where King said, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character."

"I've seen people use the 'I Have a Dream' speech as a way to divert attention away from race and focus on that sort of colorblind society," he said. "From where I sit, that does a grave injustice to the totality of King's vision. His vision was much larger than pushing a moral imagination of a country. He wanted to see material gain in society."

Brian King covers education and politics for The Transcript. Reach him at bking@normantranscript.com.