August 28, 1963

[rug]

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

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 of hope to millions of slaves, who had been seared in the flames of whithering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the colored America is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the colored American is still sadly crippled by the manacle of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

- snip -

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi and every mountainside.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/Departments/hpolscrv/mendes1.html#speech

Full text at link.

Chills, even without Rev. King's spoken words.

[cbayer]

1. Even more so when you do hear it

[pinto]

2. Look at the crowd. Visually diverse in age, gender and race.

Says a lot about King's message and his influence.

[cbayer]

3. It was an amazing time, wasn't it.

[pinto]

4. It sure was.

[ZombieHorde]

5. I absolutely love this OP,

but if you could edit to make it more about religion, some would be happier.

MLK was a deeply religious man, and in my opinion, a genius, but the OP is more about civil rights and sanity than religion.

[rug]

6. I can't see what I can do to change it.

This speech, and the movement that birthed it, was nurtured and grew in churches, white as well as black. You can't take religion out of this equation anymore than I can artifically add a religious dimension. They are already intertwined.

It's too bad some are not as happy about it. History can't be rewritten. Maybe they can start a thread on this day about how religion had little to do with it.

In the meantime, I'll just add this paragraph from the speech:

"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.'"

If that's not enough, lock it.

[ZombieHorde]

11. Not a bad argument. nt

[cbayer]

7. I posted the alert in the hosts forum. Do you think we might discuss it there?

(I am NOT stalking you - :rofl

[ZombieHorde]

10. To the secret hideout! nt

[onager]

8. And lest we forget...

Blacks say atheists were unseen civil rights heroes

Kimberly Winston | Feb 22, 2012

(Religion News Service) - ...Juan Floyd-Thomas, a religious historian and professor at Vanderbilt University and author of a book on the origins of black humanism, agrees with Pinn, and called the traditional view of the civil rights movement as an inevitable extension of American Christianity "a mythology."

(Richard) Wright's and (A. Philip) Randolph's critiques of organized religion, Floyd-Thomas said, "would not be too far out of step with the New Atheists" -- best-selling atheist authors like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. But he laments that most African-Americans and even many nontheists are unaware of this history.

http://www.religionnews.com/ethics/race-and-ethnicity/blacks-say-atheists-were-unseen-civil-rights-heroes

"Cleanup in Aisle 3 - heads just exploded!"

[rug]

9. Who's forgotten?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/121810863