Martin Luther King

Life as a graduate student can be surreal at times. Monday morning as I cycled to the lab I noted a distinct reduction in morning traffic. Only as I got onto campus and saw the telltale lack of undergraduates, but normal number of graduate students, did I realize that it must be a national holiday. I began working through a mental checklist: - I new the New Year was behind me. - Figured I must currently be in January or February... - School does not close down for St. Patrick's day. - Labor Day? No, I always get that one wrong... - Oh yeah, what about Martin Luther King day? Bingo. I had the mystery solved before I was in the lab. As I began making tea I realized I hadn't celebrated the spirit of Martin Luther King day since, well, probably since High School. I decided to look up and listen to the famous "I Have a Dream" speech delivered in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963. I stumbled onto an audio recording at the Internet Archive and fired it up. Only a few seconds into the speech I realized that, to the best of my memory, I've never heard the speech all the way through! The public school videos always start a little over two thirds of the way through with the dream imagery:

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And so even though we face 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."

With perked interest I listened to the first two thirds for the first time. Wow. This speech doesn't simple end strong, it starts strong. And funny. I love the "bad check" analogy. I'm glad that I finally realized that there was more to this great speech. If like me you've not heard the entire speech, or if it has simply been too long, look it up. You can use the link above for audio, see original footage on YouTube, or simply duck over to American Rhetoric to read the transcript. You won't be disappointed.