Dr. Martin Luther King had a dream, and we’re still dreaming it. Now is NOT the time to say that we can’t make this dream come true.
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“Do not let your fears define your dreams, but rather let your dreams overcome your fears.”
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I have a dream.”
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I had the fortune, one of the times I delivered a keynote on how to blow up brick walls, to have a local radio announcer deliver that famous speech right before I took the stage. His delivery was spot-on. I had to wipe tears from my eyes in order not to trip on the step up to the podium.
So I went with the flow, and asked the audience, “How many of you have a dream?”
Hands shot into the air. They were fired up and teary-eyed, just like me.
So I told them a story, of a little towheaded girl, all of three years old, back in 1966. She and her mother and father were about to take a trip, to Decatur, Alabama.
Now this little girl was well-loved, and she had several baby dolls. But her father only allowed her to take one baby doll on each road trip, so the dolls had to take turns. And this time it was Lily’s turn.
Lily was the cutest little black baby doll you’ve ever seen.
And her daddy said, “Dixie, you can’t take Lily on this trip! I am not taking you and a little black baby doll to Alabama!”
I was only three. I don’t remember what I said (or how much of an explosion ensued), but I do remember the sense of horrible injustice. It was Lily’s turn! It wasn’t fair to leave her behind and take another baby doll!
He was only being prudent. Although it saddens me still, I understand that now.
“But here’s the beautiful thing,” I told my audience:“If I had a towheaded child today, and we were going to Alabama, I wouldn’t have to tell her, ‘You can’t take that doll to Alabama!’”
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“I have a dream …”
I’ll bet you do too.
Maybe you’re starting to feel as if your dream is a long ways off. Do you think Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t stand there,with all that passion, all that eloquence, all that desperation, feeling that his dream was a long ways off?
But he didn’t stop pursuing it.
And, though his dream has not reached the fullness of its potential, today we are living in a world that is much more like his dream than it was when he first shared that dream with us.
“There is a reason dreams are conceived while sleeping—that is the only time the rational mind cannot sneak in and abort them before they hatch.”
The rational mind gets in the way, doesn’t it? When we’re asleep and in the dream state, anything seems possible. Kind of like being three years old. And not understanding that a prudent father can’t go to Alabama in 1966 with a towheaded child, and a black baby doll named Lily.
When we’re sleeping, anything can happen. Then we wake up. And the rational mind says, “What are you thinking? You can’t do that!”
So what can we do to get the rational mind to go back to sleep—at least long enough for us to figure out what we really want to do? Then it can wake up and help us figure out how.
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Remember that keynote when I asked the audience how many of them had a dream? And nearly all of them raised their hands? They not only raised their hands, they reached those hands high! They waved them at me! They knew they had dreams!
Later that same morning, I asked the audience to complete the statement “what I really want to do is …” on their worksheets.
And I asked them to share.
You would have thought I’d invited them to take my place on stage!
They were confident they had a dream, but when I asked them to write it down, they weren’t so ready to commit.
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From Just Blow It Up, by Dixie Gillaspie, pages 29-32, reprinted with permission by the author. All rights reserved.
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I released Just Blow It Up in April, 2013. Even then I felt that we’d seen progress in race equality here in St. Louis.
Now the time has come for us, not just in St. Louis, but in the nation and the world, to commit to a dream. Now is NOT the time to say it “can’t” be done.
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The presentation I referenced had been given a couple of years earlier, to an audience of business professionals. And the audience was probably (if memory serves) about 30% African American. Even then I felt the energy and acceptance for the reenactment of the “I Have a Dream” speech to be universal. Many of us shed tears and nodded, male and female, black and white (and Asian, and Latino, and I don’t know what because it didn’t matter when I shook their hands so I didn’t ask.) We shared that dream.
Although we were in the room to discuss how to move through barriers that stood in the way of business goals, when I did get the audience to open up about their dreams, most of them were centered around personal missions; the impact they wanted to have in the world, not strictly for themselves.
In the time between that presentation and publishing the book, I moved from the suburbs into the city. I fell in love with St. Louis all over again. I saw that we still had a long way to go, but I saw the daily street corner shifts that said we were going. Some days by millimeters, some days by yards, but going.
The events in Ferguson could so easily halt, even reverse, that progress. Yet I have seen my city gather round, each of us doing what we can and what we know. Artists and activists, educators and factory workers, male and female, black and white (and Asian, and Latino, and I don’t know what because it still doesn’t matter so I don’t ask.)
Now the time has come for us, not just in St. Louis, but in the nation and the world, to commit to a dream. Now is NOT the time to say it “can’t” be done.
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I was born the year the “I Have a Dream” speech was given. I was raised in southern Kansas where the only dark faces were the farmer’s sunbrowned wrinkled ones. But we traveled, because my father made his living moving families from one city to another and my mother and I went with him. I learned my colors sitting on a park bench in Mississippi while my father unloaded his moving van full of military issue furniture.
“Mommy, man’s shirt blue.”
“Uh huh.”
“Mommy, man’s pants brown.”
“Uh huh.”
“Mommy, man black.”
“Uh huh.”
Kids don’t care. Color is an observable fact, not a definitive characteristic.
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This is a time where diplomacy, determination, and defiance must come together for democracy. No ONE of those elements will be sufficient.
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The kids wouldn’t have cared if I brought a black baby doll named Lily into their community. Why do we?
It’s the course of least resistance to focus on blame, to say we’re exactly where we were 50 years ago, to even say that it’s worse now than it was then. Because those beliefs allow our rational mind to justify doing nothing. Or to justify a lot of yelling at someone else while we change nothing at all.
But the course of least resistance always goes downhill. And that isn’t where we want to go.
This is a time where diplomacy, determination, and defiance must come together for democracy. No ONE of those elements will be sufficient. Dr. King left us a legacy of all three. Let us honor Dr. King’s dream. Let us honor the progress that dream has allowed us to make in the last 50 years. Let us continue to move toward that dream with reason and with hope.
Let us not kill the dream that has been kept alive, however fragile its health has seemed to be, for more than 50 years.
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Photo: Flickr/ash_crow
The cricket test. If you get a large jar and put a cricket in the jar, the cricket will jump out. That is who we are when we start our lives …. we don’t have limits as to what we can do. You take a cricket and put in in a jar and place a lid on the jar (of course with holes so that it can breath) the cricket will jump and hit the lid. After a while, you can take the lid off and the cricket will only jump to the point where the lid was. Later in… Read more »
That’s a wonderful illustration Tom. I often tell about how elephants are trained. Much the same conditioning. We might think we’re smarter than elephants and crickets, but we’re so smart we forget to challenge what we “know.” Challenge everything. Every day. What was true yesterday may be false today.
Many of us have dreams but the taking the action part is where those dreams die. I was there, I stayed their for 12 years. Dr. King and so many others had to overcome things we probably will never understand to make their dreams a reality. We really have no excuse. You have to want it, you have to believe.
No matter how long we stay there, it’s never too late to start working toward the dream whether it’s personal or for the entire world! I’ve read your story, you’re a walking testament to what happens when you want it, believe in it, and take action toward it! Thanks for being an inspiration.