MLK I have a dream speech

[Greg Bernhardt]

How little we've advanced in 60 years. Worth a watch for today.

 

[EricDMMiller]

That is a great speech. I also recommend listening to his Massey Lecture series. In 1967, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation invited Martin Luther King Jr. to deliver the annual public Massey Lectures. The full lecture series is available at the following URL:

PRX » Series » Martin Luther King Jr. Massey Lectures

exchange.prx.org

The transcripts have been published as a book a few times, but listening to them is highly recommended.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

I feel there was a huge amount of advance in the last 60 years, up to Obama, but what's really scary is how rapidly things have gone backwards!

 

[gleem]

I am periodically finding reasons to go back and read our history. I found speeches by an African American congressman, Rep. Thomas E. Miller of South Carolina, made on January 22 and February 19, 1891, which seem apropos on this day.

February 19.

“I have been reminded that to make this speech may cost me my seat I shall not be muffled here. Muffled drums are instruments of the dead. I am in part the representative of the living; of those whose rights are denied; of those who are slandered by the press, on the lecture platform, in the halls of legislation, and oftentimes by men in the livery of heaven, and I deem it my supreme duty to raise my voice, though feebly, in their defense.”

The article featuring his speechs noted

It was the second—and last—speech Miller gave from the House floor as a member of Congress. He was one of the last five African American members of the House in the nineteenth century; no Black candidates would be elected to Congress from 1900 to 1928, and none from a Southern state until 1972. Miller ran in November 1888 in a Sumter County district that was more than 80% African American—gerrymandered to contain (and control) most of the region’s Black population. His opponent was the white Democratic incumbent, William Elliott, who claimed victory and was seated in the new Congress. Miller contested the election on the grounds that most Black voters had been prevented from casting ballots, and on September 23, 1890, with only a week remaining in the first session of the 51st Congress, the Republican-controlled House voted to seat him in Elliott’s place. For the remaining months of the term, he was the only Republican in the seven-member delegation from South Carolina.

At that time, the Republican Party was the advocate for Black Americans' civil rights. They had introduced a bill called the Federal Election Bill aka "Force Bill" to require Federal overisight of congressional elections to ensure Black Americans were not disenfranchised by the Southern Democrats

Miller was eventually replaced by Wiliam Elliott.

The following are three paragraphs from his speech for the passage of the Force Bill made on January 22, 1891 seeking redress for the current state of affairs in the South.

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Chairman, it is late in the day and in the session, but some things are being said to which I should like to reply. To hold office is a precious gift, and the race to which I belong are desirous of it, but there are gifts superior to office. Gentlemen talk about the North and about its not giving negroes representation on their tickets. That is not the thing we are suffering most from in the South.

There are other things of more importance to us. First is the infernal lynch law. That is the thing we most complain of. It is a question whether when we go to work we will return or not. Second, they have little petty systems of justices who rob us of our daily toil, and we can not get redress before the higher tribunals. Third, we work for our task-masters, and they pay us if they please, for the courts are so constructed that negroes have no rights if those rights wind up in dollars and cents to be paid by the white task-masters. . . . Yes, gentlemen, we want office; but the first and dearest rights the negro of the South wants are the right to pay for his labor, his right of trial by jury, his right to his home, his right to know that the man who lynches him will not the next day be elected by the State to a high and honorable trust; his right to know that murderers shall be convicted and not be elected to high office, and sent abroad in the land as grand representatives of the toiling and deserving people. . . .

He goes on to give specific instances of cruel treatment by the Democratic white population.