Is the Dream Alive in You?

As "we" celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I see a growing disassociation with the slain civil rights leader among young people. I know it is a generation further removed from segregated schools and a society more in tuned to selective memory sound bites. Dr. King would have turned 81 Friday should be remembered everyday, is often forgotten on this day in some circles.

Dr. King left a great legacy behind but unfortunately too many people, young and old, these days don’t hold onto that legacy. The disconnect concerning King began years ago. Our generation spent so much time trivializing what he was really about that young people have no idea. We have lost sight of the fact that he died organizing poor people’s campaigns. It is ironic, almost poetic, that the Haiti crisis happened days before the celebration. If Dr. King were alive his energy would have gone not only to addressing the crisis caused by the earthquake but before the earthquake.

Those who remember King have allowed parades and banquets to replace marches and relief efforts. We have these wonderful parades and social events but do nothing when the event is over. Like other leaders whose image grows into idolatry, King has always been misremembered. For a lot of people King the Peacemaker in the sense of race relations is more comfortable than someone like Malcolm X. But you take a closer look there are similarities between the two that gets lost in the shuffle.

In the years leading up to his assassination in 1968, King focused much more intensely on economic dislocation, social democracy and the war in Vietnam. The “I Have a Dream" speech is a symbolic snapshot but it isn’t the whole person.

We have to remind our youth where they come from and how they got where they are today. On this Martin Luther King Day let us all keep our dream alive. Take a look at that person in the mirror and know that everything is possible.

The Great American Pilgrimage

They came on planes, train, buses and automobiles. All taking the great pilgrimage to the capitol city of the United States to see history in the making. One group of approximately 40 citizens of New York City boarded a bus in Brooklyn. The group included a 79-year old minister who led them in prayer before the trip. He was born in Harlem and was in jail in 1962 in Albany, Georgia for protesting without a permit. He was jailed with Dr. King for six days with no food. He said that he couldn’t attend the 1963 march on Washington or the Million Man March, but that this was a great opportunity for him because of his age. He said this trip for him was a fulfillment of time because he believes that Americans have achieved the goal of liberty and freedom for all. He stated that he used to have to ride the back of the bus but now he sits wherever he wants on the bus. He also said that he is still in college pursing his BA degree. He went on to say that today the battlefield of the civil rights movement is in the public schools and if we don’t help young people we won’t have future leaders.

One young woman on the bus said that she was representing her mother, her grandmother, and her great grandmother, the women that raised her. And that she had sweet sadness. They never thought they would see this in their lifetime. For them being safe and getting a good job was the best they could ask for – never being president. She said Michelle Obama reminds her of them; she appreciated her for being a strong Black woman who has made it positive for being who you are. When asked if riding to Washington on a bus had any particular significance for her, she replied, “the bus is so reflective of the people it is carrying - it breaks down and gets fixed - something always going on.” At one point the bus stopped for a mechanical failure and she commented, “The bus is like our collective experience - a little resistance - but we’re going to keep going.

One man brought along five boys on this journey to Washington and commented when asked about this trip, “I was at the million man march. I never experienced a spiritual feeling like that. I brought the boys with me because I wanted them to experience the power of this collective gathering. He said he is teaching his sons that we can no longer say that because we are Black that we can’t! He said, “This frees children of a sense of limitation.”

On middle-aged woman from the church that I attend drove from Texas to D.C. by herself. She tried to get someone to go with her, but couldn’t get any takers. She said that she had to be there to hear for herself was President Obama was going to say. She left the Dallas area early Saturday morning and drove until she got tired and spent the night in Tennessee and got up Sunday and arrived at a friend’s house in Baltimore Sunday evening. She said she saw about 25 accidents along the way but nothing was going to turn her back. She said she only goes to the restroom and eats when she needs gas. My family knows that sounds familiar when I drive on long trips.

I had the opportunity to witness many of the worlds’ defining moments of modern history the last few years with the help of the ever present camera; the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989; the end of apartheid in South Africa and Nelson Mandela walking out of prison in 1991;, murders John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X, 911, the marches of Washington, but this moment and the days leading up to it have brought more emotion than all the others combined . I have never seen so many Black folks waving American flags. The media tries to beat down Michelle Obama for her saying that for the first time she had been proud of her country, but when the camera scanned the crowd at the National Mall and all those small American Flags were waving it left the TV commentators and myself speechless.

We all witnessed a part of history that day. And I believe that all of America woke up to what this country can truly be. We still have a ways to go, but I believe that Black people and all people have opened their minds what it truly means to be called American. Everything is possible. I will now hold President Obama to the same standards of success that I’ve held all prior Presidents. For the sake of ALL people in our nation, I wish him and want desperately for him to succeed. When he is successful, we are all, Black, White, Brown, Yellow, Red, better off and that’s really all we can expect from our President, regardless of his ethnic background.

One day soon, there will be no more first Black anything…I am just trying to think of a title where there has never been and I can think of a few just in my neighborhood and probably your too.

Obama Accepts Nomination with Great Speech

Forty-five years to the day that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington, Senator Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for the president of the United States with a great speech of his own. Surrounded by an enormous, roaring crowd (estimated 84,000), Senator Obama promised a clean break from the broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of the last four years Thursday night as he embarked on the final lap of his bid to become the nation's first Black president.

He vowed to cut taxes for nearly all working-class families, responsively end the war in Iraq and break America's dependence on Mideast oil within a decade. By contrast, he said, "John McCain has voted with President Bush 90 percent of the time and we can’t afford to take a 10 percent chance," a cutting indictment of his Republican rival — on health care, education, the economy and more.

"I realize that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office. I don't fit the typical pedigree" of a presidential candidate was as close as he came to the long-smoldering issue that may well determine the outcome of the election.

Fireworks lit the night sky after Senator Obama concluded his speech. His wife, Michelle, and their daughters Malia and Sasha joined him as the country music anthem "Only in America" filled the stadium. Vice presidential running mate Senator Joseph Biden and his wife, Jill, joined them onstage.

Senator Obama delivered his 44-minute nomination acceptance speech in an unrivaled convention setting, before a crowd of unrivaled size, with the backdrop that suggested the West Wing of the White House, and the thousands of convention delegates seated around the podium in an enormous semicircle.

Representative John Lewis, who was present on the day of this 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s memorable speech spoke from the convention stage. "Tonight we are gathered here in this magnificent stadium in Denver because we still have a dream," said the Georgia lawmaker, who marched with King and still has the scars to show for it, supported Senator Hillary Clinton, then switched his support to Senator Obama later in the primaries.

The rise of Senator Obama reminds me of Moses and the children of Israel about to go into the promised land. God did not allow the Moses generation to enter into the promised land because they still had a mentality of being captives. They saw themselves as victims. In fact they saw themselves as grasshoppers and they saw the people who occupied the promised land as giants. They had a slave mentality whereas Joshua and his generation envisioned themselves as victors and held onto the promises of God. They saw themselves as winning. Senator Barack Obama is of the Joshua generation with new ideas. As a man think, so he is…

The Moses generation still remembers the “White Only” signs, the water hoses, the attack dogs, the burning crosses and the bodies hanging from trees. The Moses generation holds their breath, hoping that Obama didn’t mess up or God forbid, nothing happens to him. The Moses generation sees the outdoor speech as a possible set up for a repeat of that horrible day in Dallas 45 years ago in November. The Joshua generation sees possibilities. The Joshua generation sees way to make things better.

Senator Obama was the first to deliver an outdoor convention acceptance speech since President John F. Kennedy did so at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960.

In his speech, Senator Obama pledged to jettison President Bush's economic policy — and replace it with his own designed to help hard-pressed families. "I will cut taxes for 95 percent of all working families. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class," he said. He also promised to break the country's dependence on Mideast oil. He said that Washington has been talking about doing it for 30 years "and John McCain has been there for 26 of them."

"We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country," Obama said. "I will never hesitate to defend this nation." He said McCain had no standing on foreign policy, not after backing the Iraq war from the start and rejecting timetables for withdrawal now accepted by Bush. "John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war," he said. Obama's pledge to end the war in Iraq responsibly. "Sen. McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush was right more than 90 percent of the time?

Senators Obama and Biden leave the convention on Friday for Pennsylvania, first stop on an eight-week sprint to Election Day. This was once-in-a-campaign opportunity to speak to millions of voters who have yet to make up their minds between McCain and him and Senator Barack Obama hit a homerun. Although this was an acceptance speech but it sure felt presidential – sort of like an inaugural speech.

As Senator Obama was walking out onto the platform to deliver his acceptance speech I imagined the civil rights heros of the past looking on smiling through tears of joy; there was Martin hugging his wife Coretta Scott King, standing next to Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks, Ralph David Abernathy, Thurgood Marshall, C.K. Steele and Fred Shuttlesworth who both helped MLK organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), there's Stokely Carmichael, and the four students who staged a sit-in at the Woolworths lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, Emmett Till, James Meredith, Medgar Evers, the Black and White freedom riders who rode busses throughout the south to integrate public transportation and were beaten for their troubles, there is the four little girls that were bombed while at Sunday School, and the three young men (two of whom were White) who were killed while working to register Black voters in Mississippi, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and the countless others who suffered along the way to this historic day.

Emory Douglas: Artist for The Black Panthers

In January 1967, the organizers of San Francisco's first annual Malcolm X Grassroots Memorial tapped Emory Douglas, a 22-year-old graphic arts student, to create the poster and flyers for the Hunter's Point event. There was a group coming over from Oakland to provide security for Betty Shabazz (Malcolm X's widow). When the group arrived, it included Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.

Douglas was a member of City College's Black Student Union who was designing props and sets for playwright LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka). He had heard rumors about Seale and Newton. The two friends from Merritt College had, just three months before, co-founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. They liked Emory’s work and invited him to be a part of what they were doing. He was soon named the party's minister of culture, a position he filled until the Black Panther newspaper ceased publication in 1979. Art directing every issue, he created a visual history of the party's ideology and agenda, designing hundreds of provocative original illustrations, photo collages and political posters, more than 200 of which are reproduced in the recently released Rizzoli book "Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas."

The Black Panther Party was a controversial offshoot of the civil rights and Black nationalist movements. Douglas' involvement with the party began one April evening 40 years ago, when he paid his first visit to Eldridge Cleaver's apartment, the so-called Black House. Douglas found Seale working on the inaugural, typewritten and mimeographed issue of the Black Panther. Douglas offered his commercial typography and illustration skills (first acquired in a Chino prison print shop as a teen sentenced to juvenile detention for burglary) to make the weekly paper look as potent and persuasive as its message.

Douglas says that "since the Black community at that time weren't by and large readers," he "created an 'everyperson' look everyone could connect with." In effect, he branded the militant-chic Panther image decades before the concept became commonplace. He used the newspaper's popularity (circulation neared 400,000 at its peak in 1970) to incite the disenfranchised to action, portraying the poor with genuine empathy, not as victims but as outraged, unapologetic and ready for a fight.

Douglas' art echoes expressionist elements of the Black artists he admires, Charles White and Elizabeth Catlett. His style -- drawing with thick black outlines and creating woodcut textures -- is similar to the Chicano poster art of the '60s and '70s. The images are full of anger and biting humor. Quiet and with an easy sense of humor, Douglas exudes a surprising calm.

"Emory's pictures are actually a lot less terrifying than the news photos of the day," says Kathleen Cleaver (Eldridge Cleaver's ex-wife) formerly the Panthers' communications secretary and now a senior lecturer at Emory University Law School. "It's amazing that he was able to maintain his gentle artistic being through those risky, extreme times. Cities were on fire, people were being arrested by the droves and police brutality was the order of the day."

As the Panthers' agenda broadened to include social programs, Douglas' posters illustrated the impact of the party's community outreach: free breakfast programs for children, grocery giveaways, health clinics and sickle-cell anemia testing. "A lot of people would say they could look at the artwork in the paper and see in which direction the party was headed," Douglas says. He modestly admits that "some people did start buying the paper specifically for the art."

Emory Douglas lives in San Francisco's Excelsior district with his blind mother, and has continued to work as a graphic artist since the Black Panther Party's collapse in 1980. After a brief stint designing ads for Safeway ("That was definitely not my thing," he says), Douglas has been an illustrator and prepress manager for the Bayview/Hunter's Point Sun-Reporter newspaper since 1984. He is currently working on a "children's artwork series called 'Health is Wealth,' a dialogue between two kids about HIV/AIDS."