It was a hot day in August

While sort of hearing TV news people talk about Martin Luther King Jr.’s Aug 28, 1963, speech and reflecting on the fact that their birth dates had not yet arrived, many of the TV news people who informed an audience what King meant and so many of his dreams were not yet realized, I remembered that day as particularly hot in North East Texas.

It was the end of August, the hottest part of the year, but that day more so than usual.

I was 17 and about to enter my senior year in a week. I watched the televised speech on NBC. TV news seldom gave several hours of live time to events outside manned space craft launches or national political conventions. There were World Series games, NFL championship games and the new AFL championship, but those were sports events. Political events did not get that much coverage.

But that gathering in Washington, D.C., was something entirely new in the age of television.

Not new are the things politicians and news people warp around to fit King’s “I have a dream speech.” I remember King talking about how one day white children and (Negro? African-American?) children would walk hand in hand across the red clay hills of Georgia. I remember most of all the dream that “one day my four children will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

I am white, and believe most white people remember that part above all others.

What the wrap-arounds made a part of the dreams:

• I have a dream that one day Negro women will be paid by the government to have children out of wedlock.

• I have a dream that one day Negro families will be fenced behind psychological brick walls of black ghettoes.

• I have a dream that one day Negro families will be systematically destroyed by a government that will not allow fathers to be part of raising their own children.

• I have a dream that one day education theorists and government bureaucrats will become more important than ensuring Negro children receive good schooling.

There are more and more things we all can add to the list.

No leader’s beliefs and philosophy remain unchanged with his death.

I remember, too, April 5, 1968. I was sergeant of the guard at Fort Mead, Md. At 2 a. m. the officer of the day woke me up and said, “Martin Luther King has been killed and there’s hell to pay.”