I have a dream

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

This is my favourite part of Martin Luther King's speech "I have a dream" of August 1963. For me, he is one of the most admirable men in our history. 

When I was about 13 or 14 years of age my sister gave me a book called "Sie hatten einen Traum" (in English: They had a dream). The story takes place in the southern states of the US in Birmingham, Alabama and is about a 19 year old black girl who is attacked by members of the Ku-Klux-Klan but can luckily manage to flee. She then falls in love with a member of Martin Luther King's men, who has come down to Birmingham to non-violently protest for the rights of the Afro-American population. The book was so captivating and fascinated me so much that I wanted to know more about this period of American history. I started to inform myself and tried to find out as much as possible.

Then, at the oral matura, I chose to talk about a film released in 1988 called "Mississippi Burning". I would absolutely recommend this film to everyone out there because even though it was released about 25 years ago, it perfectly shows what it must have been like to be an Afro-American and live in the south of the United States. It conveys so many emotions, the fear as well as the hope, the weakness as well as the courage. When I finished watching it, I sat there in front of the TV for a few minutes and couldn't do anything else. I was still so into the film and thought about it over and over again. 

 

The film is shocking and brutal, there is no attempt to palliate, no effort to try to make things look less cruel. The soundtrack is brilliant. A house is burning, you can see the burning cross of the Ku-Klux-Klan and in the background there is this wonderful woman's voice, singing. Just her voice, nothing else. Nothing else would have fit the scene better and would have been able to convey so much emotion like her voice. It may sound strange, but that's the feeling I got while watching the film. 

 

 

 

Martin Luther King, his courage, his ambition and finally his dream of equal rights for everyone, no matter which skin colour, religion or gender, sparked so many people. America wouldn't be the same place today if there wasn't a man like him - if there wasn't a man, who stood up for equal rights, who encouraged other people to do the same and fight for something worth fighting for. I admire him and at the same time I am thinking about our generation. There are things worth fighting for, there is still so much injustice in our world - but where are the charismatic people standing up for what they believe in?