The crimes of freedom

Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech is widely regarded as a crucial landmark in the campaign for civil rights in America. Listening again to it now, it rings as powerfully and persuasively as it must have done to all of those present at the Lincoln War Memorial in Washington for the climax of what had been called the March To Washington For Jobs and Freedom, which took place on August 28, 1963.

It was a wonderful piece of oratory, brilliantly structured and modulated. The language was rich and expressive, the imagery potent and memorable. Drawing on the motifs of gospel music, it built to a moving climax, that was full of passion and hope – and excitement at the prospect of change and renewal, at the expectation of freedom it evoked. Even now it is magnificently inspiring. Then it must have felt like a ball-busting emotional tour-de-force.
It may be a bit religious for some, and atheists don't get a look in, but there are so many passages from what Martin Luther King had to say on that day that are worth recalling, that highlights are almost impossible to choose. Early in the speech, he delved into banking terminology and spoke about the promissory note of the Constitution of the United States of America in relation to equality. “Instead of honoring that promissory note, America has given the negro people a bad cheque,” he said, “a cheque which has come back marked insufficient funds.”
Everyone knew the feeling. But he had more to say.
“We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt,” he continued. “We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the vaults of opportunity of this nation so we have come to cash this cheque, a cheque that will give us, upon demand, the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”
People of colour had come to cash the cheque. Black people. Negroes. African Americans. They’d had enough of discrimination. They’d had enough of broken promises. They’d had enough of second and third class citizenship. They’d had enough in particular of being victimised, bullied, raped, brutalised and, in worst case scenarios, burnt out or driven away from their homes by hate mongers who were immunised from the rigours of the law because they were white and the people they were terrorising were black. The time for waiting was over.
“We have also come to this hallowed spot,” Martin Luther King said, “to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning.”
1963 is not an end but a beginning. So right he was. A change, we thought then, as the song had it, is gonna come. But the mire was deep and the pace of change grindingly slow at times, and inequality so ingrained in the systems and the language and the economics of the United States that it seemed often that it would never really happen, that equality – real equality – was, in truth, an impossible dream. No wonder there is a feeling now that we are opening a new chapter in history. No wonder that optimism is the order of the day.
What was started over 45 years ago might be said to have finally, genuinely come to fruition with the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States, towards the tail end of 2008. It has taken this long – half a lifetime since the great summer of those first civil rights marches in America – but finally we have a black President. Finally, we have the most tangible conceivable symbol of the fact that it is possible to defeat prejudice and to escape limitations, and to shape your own destiny irrespective of the colour of your skin.
That Obama is intelligent, a fine speaker, a man of ideas, a liberal who understands what feminism was and is about, who is connected to his children, as he was connected to his parents – all of these things add to the sense, which is so widespread at the moment not just in the United States but all over the world, that the dream about which Martin Luther King spoke is about be realised in the most amazing way imaginable.
I know that there is, that there has to be, an element of wishful thinking in all of this, that the dream simply cannot be matched by tawdry reality, that there is a danger that the horrible, mundane reality of politics and politicking will grind him and those close to him down until their hands are on the ground, their knees sore, their backs bent and their hearts broken. And yet the portents are powerful. The inauguration of Barack Obama takes place on January 20. The previous day is Martin Luther King Day, celebrating his birth on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, as recent tradition has it, on the third Monday of the month. It couldn’t have happened more fittingly, one symbolic day leading into the next.
A celebratory gathering will come together on the 19th, at the Lincoln War Memorial. Obama will be there. Bruce Springsteen will open the celebrations. The plan is to broadcast Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech. And it promises to be an extraordinary moment when U2, who have been invited to play their tribute to MLK, ‘Pride In The Name of Love’, at the close of the speech, strum the first magical chords of that celebrated anthem, which tells of the death of the dream, on April 4 1968, when Martin Luther King was assassinated...
“Early morning, April 4/Shot rings out in the Memphis sky/ Free at last, they took your life/They could not take your pride.”
Who would have imagined it, back in 1978, watching them take their first steps, that this Irish band would see that dream revived, that they would play a key role in the celebrations surrounding the ascent to power of the first black American President? Who would have imagined, even then, the election of Barack Hussein Obama?
“So let freedom ring,” Martin Luther King said. “From the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let freedom ring. From the mighty mountains of New York, let freedom ring, from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania, let freedom ring, from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado, let freedom ring from the crevatial slopes of California.
“But not only that. Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill in Mississippi. From every mountainside.”
Let freedom ring.
Now, at last, it does. That invigorating autumn has arrived. Let’s enjoy it.

January 19 is Martin Luther King Day