Martin Luther King JR
Hello Everyone, Ivy here,
Todays podcast is a little different to the usual style. At the heart of the podcast is the famous speech by Martin Luther King Jr in 1963, which followed on 100 years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves. When Martin Luther King climbed the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC to describe his vision of America. More than 200,000 people (black and white) came to listen. I quote from one publication (included in the Reference Sources below):- “they came by plane, by car, by bus, by train and by foot. They came to Washington to demand equal rights for black people, and the dream that they heard on the steps of the Monument became the dream of a generation.”
The original speech that Martin Luther King intended to give was meant to be quite short, but he was asked by another speaker on the day, to talk about his dreams. I will touch on that request and quote sections from the famous speech, and highlight the key themes that stand out for me, in terms of the implications and hopes of equal rights for black people in the USA. Juxtaposed with these extracts I am simultaneously commenting on relative activity in the UK such as legislation passed in a similar time frame, which is connected in some way to the topic in question. I also comment on systems and processes and attitudes publicly referred to, relative to the British Royal Family and its interaction with people, linked to legislation in force at the time, but the Royal Family ignored or were exempt from!!
There is another link in the Reference Sources where you can hear the full speech spoken by Martin Luther King himself. Still as powerful as it was on that day I am sure. It lasts around 17 minutes. Not that I could even do it justice to recite the whole thing, but you all can listen to the original recording of this famous speech at your leisure, by clicking on the link listed below.
Due to the slow progress in securing an equality based legislative edict,” President John F Kennedy recognised that only a strong civil rights Bill would put teeth into the drive to secure equal protection of the laws for African Americans. On June 11th 1963, he proposed such a Bill to Congress, asking for legislation that would provide “the kind of equality of treatment which we would want for ourselves.” Southern representatives in Congress managed to block the bill in committee, and civil rights leaders sought some way to build political momentum behind the measure”
A. Philip Randolph, a labour leader and long time civil rights activist, called for a massive march on Washington to dramatize the issue. He welcomed the participation of white groups as well as black in order to demonstrate the multiracial backing for civil rights. The various elements of the civil rights movement, many of which had been wary of one another, agreed to participate. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and the Urban League all managed to bury their differences and work together. The leaders even agreed to tone down the rhetoric of some of the more militant activists for the sake of unity, and they worked closely with the Kennedy administration, which hoped the march would, in fact, lead to passage of the civil rights bill.
On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people, a fifth of them white, gathered near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to rally for “jobs and freedom.” The roster of speakers included speakers from nearly every segment of society — labor leaders like Walter Reuther, clergy, film stars such as Sidney Poitier and Marlon Brando and folksingers such as Joan Baez. Each of the speakers was allotted fifteen minutes, but the day belonged to the young and charismatic leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had originally prepared a short and somewhat formal recitation of the sufferings of African Americans attempting to realize their freedom in a society chained by discrimination. He was about to sit down when gospel singer Mahalia Jackson called out, “Tell them about your dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream!” Encouraged by shouts from the audience, King drew upon some of his past talks, and the result became the landmark statement of civil rights in America — a dream of all people, of all races and colors and backgrounds, sharing in an America marked by freedom and democracy.
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 withering 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.
One hundred years later, the colored American lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the colored American is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we have come to our Nation’s Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our great republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked “insufficient funds.”
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.
We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is not time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy.
Now it the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.
Now it the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
Now is the time to make justice a reality to all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of it’s colored citizens. This sweltering summer of the colored people’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. Those who hope that the colored Americans needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.
There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the colored citizen is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
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 colored person’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 selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “for white only.”
We cannot be satisfied as long as a colored person in Mississippi cannot vote and a colored person 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.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of your trials and tribulations. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by storms of persecutions and staggered by the winds of police brutality.
You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our modern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you, my friends, we have the difficulties of today and tomorrow.
I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day out in the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.
With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father’s died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the 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 curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that, let freedom, ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
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.”
My Selection from the Speech – Alongside UK Legislation in Place at The Time
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 withering 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.
1975 Sex Discrimination Act – The Act made sex discrimination illegal in the areas of employment, education and the provision of goods, facilities nd services.
1976 Race Relations Act – the Race Relations Act was established to prevent race discrimination. It made race discrimination unlawful in employment, training, housing, education and the provision of goods, facilities and services.
One hundred years later, the colored American lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the colored American is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we have come to our Nation’s Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our great republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
1976 International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights. – The general principles expressed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were specific legal force through these two covenants. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights make up the International Bill of Human Rights.
This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked “insufficient funds.”
The Equality Act – will link with another point discussed a little further on in this podcast.
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.
We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is not time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy.
Now it the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.
Now it the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
Now is the time to make justice a reality to all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of it’s colored citizens. This sweltering summer of the colored people’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. Those who hope that the colored Americans needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.
1976 Race Relations Act – the Race Relations Act was established to prevent race discrimination. It made race discrimination unlawful in employment, training, housing, education and the provision of goods, facilities and services.
There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the colored citizen is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
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 colored person’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.
1976 Race Relations Act – the Race Relations Act was established to prevent race discrimination. It made race discrimination unlawful in employment, training, housing, education and the provision of goods, facilities and services.
UK signed up to the European Court of Human Rights in 1966 – yet the UK Royal Family did not have to abide by any of its framework. Other employers would be deemed as breaking the law, but the Monarchy was left alone. As aa result anyone working for the Uk Royalss, could never bring a case to a Tribunal or any other legal forum, because of this exemption, and it meant that if anyone did pursue a case, it had to be when they were no longer employed by the Firm. Outrageous. The treatment of the Duchess of Sussex is a continuation of this activity, and the efforts made to defame and diminish the Duchess of Sussex since she and the Duke of Sussex, left to live on another continent, and are self financing, is something that I have long argued should have been taken up by International Legal organisations. Hopefully when certain communications land on the desks of these said organisations, someone somewhere will stand up for what is right.
We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “for white only.”
We cannot be satisfied as long as a colored person in Mississippi cannot vote and a colored person 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.
1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – Governments worldwide promised all children the same rights by adopting the Convention on the Rights of the Child, also known as the CRC or UNCRC. The basic premise is that children (under the age of 18) are born with the same fundamental freedoms and inherent rights as all human beings, but with specific additional needs because of their vulnerability.
NB Children born into UK Royalty do not have these rights. They are born into a system with rules and processes that they never have any input. Royal children in the UK are given priority attention if they high in the Line of Succession, and made to feel that they are better than others. Subsequqnt children in that family are brought into the world to be foot soldiers to the Heir, and are told from an early age never to have ambitions and never to outshine the heir. The children are referred to as “spares” and they are never allowed to reach their full potential, and are not allowed to leave the Royal family. UK Royal history is littered with far from happy tales of any of those referred to as Spares who tried to exercise independent thought. The 1st Duke of Sussex was penalised for having independent thought, and both of his marriages were dissolved by the King because he did not approved of the brides. The 2nd Duke of Sussex has been treated in a similar way, but unlike the first Duke of Sussex he has managed to escape this regime, at huge psychologival cost, and to this day, The Duke of Sussex and his wife are treated like escaped slaves. Their treatment is no different to how nations historically treated traitors. The hate deliberately generated towards this couple is off the scale, and the risk to their lives has increased. UK Royal history is littered with questionable deaths (despite the official reasons given in documentation) relating to anyone who exercised independent thought, and who was deemed to threaten the order of things and the lifespan of the Monarchy.
The treatment of the Sussex children by the UK Monarchy and its processes is abhorrent, and has been done on skin colour and nothing else, whatever the Uk history books state. Elsewhere in the world, the history books will state the truth, and records held by Sussex Squad support networks worldwide, also have a different tale to tell. The alteration of the Birth Certificate for the first child, is illegal anywhere outside the gilded gates in the UK. It is a situation that WILL be rectified some day. In the meanwhile, USA records state the correct information, and thankfully both children have dual citizenship, so to repeat, global history published information will state the truth, and also no doubt explain why only the UK removed the name of the childs mother, and left just the Title on the Birth Certificate. The only person of colour married into the Royal Family in the Uk had no financial provision made for her, and her name was removed from her child’s certificate. Only the POC phone records were automatically deleted at the end of each day, but kept by another member of the Royal family and the senior officer working for that family member. The same officer was a witness for the defendant in the lengthy and difficult court case concerning privacy. So another member of the Royal family, gave permission for such records to be used as evidence against the wife of another member of the same Royal family. Human Rights is not the only breach in terms of the law.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of your trials and tribulations. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by storms of persecutions and staggered by the winds of police brutality.
You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our modern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
2006 Universal Periodic Review. The intention of this system is for the first time, all member states would come under regular scrutiny through the Universal Periodic Review. I need to check if this process is still in place, because I see no evidence of it in the UK. I do know that UK government has spoken about the need to ‘water down’ Human Rights legislation, alongside legislation relating to workers rights, and the latest is an attack on the rights of peaceful protests being disallowed in the future. There are currently a series of communication that I am personally sending out to organisations expressing my personal concerns about Huamn Rights violations, and I would be interested to know if this Universal Periodic Review is still active, and if not, what has replaced it. I see no evidence of International Legal bodies wanting to look into activity of breaches in the UK, and the global implications of cyber hate crimes globally.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you, my friends, we have the difficulties of today and tomorrow.
I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
2010 Equality Act – the Equality Act brought together more than 116 separate pieces of legislation into one single Act – a new streamlined legal framework to protect the rights of individuals and advance equality of opportunity for all.
The UK Monarchy does not have to abide by Equality legislation.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day out in the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.
Employees in low paid service jobs in the Royal household, the Sussex children are certainly judged by their skin colour. Thankfully the parents of those children, ensured that their children did not suffer like others before them. Employees in those service jobs, knowing that they will never be allowed to work in any of the offices in the Royal household, purely because of their skin colour, I feel for you all. This is fact by the way, not my opinion. This is on record that people of colour and immigrants are not allowed to work in Royal offices.
To think that Martin Luther King gave this famous speech around this time, and yet the UK Monarchy was allowed to operate this way, and continues to do so today is beyond disgusting.
The mere fact that the Monarch decided to have the Royal band play Happy birthday outside Buckingham Palace recently is laughable. The BRF has never done that before, or made any mention of MLK birthday, yet here they were being their usual performative selves, pretending to show interest in a man of colour, who represented everything that they were against. Nothing has changed in respect of how the Royal family view and treat people of colour since the 1963. They are fooling very few people with that nonsense. Treatment behind of black people behind those gilded gates is straight out of slavery mentality.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I still dream of such things too here in the UK.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
As things stand here in the UK, working class people of all ethnic origin are going to be worse off in the coming decade or two, and if you are a person of colour, we have extra weight to carry on our shoulders, just to get through the day.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.
With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father’s died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the 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 curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that, let freedom, ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
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.”
My final comment on this I Have a Dream speech is that the UK Monarchy is dissolved in my lifetime. There is no need for any modern society to have a monarchy, and the few that are left, are on borrowed time. A few are making efforts to change their approach, but the UK Monarchy is definitely in the category of those that will fall sooner rather than later. None of the countries who have now removed a Monarchy from their structure, are no worse off – far from it, and France is an excellent example of the increased income since the Monarchy has been removed. My dream is that UK Monarchy ceases to exist in my lifetime.
Ivy Barrow
6th Feb 2022
Reference Sources
https://about-britain.com
• What is UK Unwritten constitution? “The UK is often said to have an ‘unwritten’ constitution. This is not strictly correct. It is largely written, but in different documents, but it has never been codified – brought together in a single document. This is the reason why the UK has not felt the need to codify its constitution.”
• For further reading: Herbert Garfinkel, When Negroes March: The March on Washington…(1969); Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 (1988); Stephen B. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King Jr. (1982).
“I HAVE A DREAM” (1963)
• One of my most favourite books:- Natives : Race & Class in the Ruins of Empire. (Sunday Times Best Seller) Author:- Akala
https://croner.co.uk/resources/employment-law/legislation-list/
https://www.delta-net.com/compliance/equality-and-diversity/faqs/what-is-the-uk-legislation-around-equality-and-diversity
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/home-office/about/equality-and-diversity