We the People…Realizing the Dream?

On May 25, 1787, twelve of the thirteen colonies sent representatives to Philadelphia to participate in what is now known as the Constitutional Convention. The 55 delegates who represented “We the People of the United States in 1787 had a dream to produce “form a more perfect union.” However, the conveners were not representative of the American populace in 1787. As one historian noted, it was a “convention of the well-bred, the well-fed, the well-read, and the well-wed.”

The delegation of We the People mainly included merchants and landowners who represented only their personal regional interests. Thus, as expressed by Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, “The government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation.” Now, how does We the People of the late 18^th century compare to We the People of the early 21^st century?

Today, the Constitutional provisions for We the People include not only “the well-bred, the well-fed, the well read and the well-wed,” but also the poor, hungry, undereducated and isolated. We the People are not only males of European descent, but also indigenous people, females, and descendants from five other continents. We the People are also Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists and other faiths.

However, the reality at the beginning of the 21st century is that many citizens of the United States are not realizing the dream, since they lack equal access to justice, health care, education, domestic tranquility and general welfare. Consider the following:

• Poverty rates for Blacks and Hispanics greatly exceed the national average. In 2009, 25.8 percent of Blacks and 25.3 percent of Hispanics were poor, compared to 9.4 percent of Non-Hispanic Whites and 12.5 percent of Asians.
• On any given night in America, anywhere from 700,000 to two million people are homeless.

• African-Americans and Latinos make up 25% of the U.S. population; however, these racial groups make up 63% of those individuals imprisoned in adult facilities.

• Native Americans die from tuberculosis at a rate more than 6.5 times higher than the general population, and are four times more likely to die of diabetes

• In 2009, the percentage of women’s to men’s median weekly earnings for full-time workers was 80.2%.

• By the end of high school, reading and mathematical skills for Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino students are roughly the same as those of White students in the eighth grade.

How, therefore, shall “We the People” realize the dream of a “more perfect union”?

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream was that our nation would “live out the true meaning of its creed” in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” And he also knew that the path toward that dream of equality and justice would not be easy. In “Where Do We Go From Here?” he argued that the task must be undertaken with “divine dissatisfaction.” He states:

• Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds.

• Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.

• Let us be dissatisfied until those that live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security.

• Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family is living in a decent sanitary home.

• Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality, integrated education.

• Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity.

• Let us be dissatisfied until men and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the content of their character and not on the basis of the color of their skin.

• Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol houses a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy and who will walk humbly with his God.

• Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

• Let us be dissatisfied until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid.

• Let us be dissatisfied. And men will recognize that out of one blood God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth.

• Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout “White Power!” – when nobody will shout “Black Power!” – but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power.”

In order for We the People to realize this dream, we must find the individual and collective will to enter into a meaningful discussion that sheds limitations and moves us aggressively through the barriers and borders that disconnect us, and leaves us struggling to achieve Dr. King’s dream.

As We the People look to local, state and national elected representatives in order to form a “more perfect union,” we must also look to ourselves as individuals who will, as Gandhi stated, “be the change we wish to see in the world.” We must balance our focus on external change with an examination of our own hearts.

Who among us stands to be dissatisfied when this dream is realized?

As the University of Michigan celebrates its 25^th observance of the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the symposium committee believes that the realization of the dream is not a final destination but a continuing journey through an ever-changing landscape and moving mile markers. The tools of navigation throughout the journey must be constantly monitored and adjusted. Our greatest tools should be our hearts, our minds and our commitment to create a nation where truly We the People…Realize the Dream.

SUGGESTED READINGS:

The Constitutional Convention of 1787

Remarks of Thurgood Marshall At The Annual Seminar of the San Francisco Patent and Trademark Law Association in Maui, Hawaii May 6, 1987

National Poverty Center, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, The University of Michigan

National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty

National Institute of Corrections - Race and Incarceration in the United States

Center for Practical Bioethics

Institute for Women’s Policy Research, The Gender Wage Gap: 2009

Teachers College, Columbia University, The Academic Achievement Gap: Fact & Figures, June 9, 2005

Martin Luther King: “Where Do We Go From Here.”

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Biography

Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family’s long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.

In 1954, Martin Luther King accepted the pastorale of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, “l Have a Dream”, he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.