Where is the Dream

Martin Luther King Breakfast
Jan. 19, 2009


I am humbled to be invited by Eddie Wright to be a part of this program. I told him that as an old retired minister I was not sure I had much to say, but he was so full of blarney that I finally agreed.

He asked me to take a few minutes to reflect on Dr. King’s Dream. As I took a few minutes to think about that, it seemed to me that, with events such as Obama’s election, we are fast approaching the time when that dream is going to have to become a concrete political agenda. As I think about the dream and the fact that the new President is a black American. As I look around me at Vance County, and there is a black man as sheriff. The last two judges to be elected were Judge Bridges and Judge Yancey. As I look at the City Council and see five out of the nine members are black Americans. When I look at the County Commissioners and we are only one vote away from having a black majority on the County Commissioners, it seems to me pretty obvious that there is a real growing awareness that there is no reason why the majority of the population in this community cannot be in charge of this community.

That would begin to mean that the black community could no longer blame the system for their problems because they are fast becoming in charge of making the rules for the system. The significance of that means that a great deal more focus may need to be placed of finding strong, outstanding leaders like Obama. It means that our young people do have to be shown there are open avenues to power in this community. The dream now becomes the basis for a political agenda by the new leaders or the dream becomes a piece of historical remembrance. It seems to me that we in Vance County are very close to the place where the black community takes charge of the dream and begins to focus their new political power towards making it a reality.

But that is the hard work because it never ends. To celebrate the achievements of Obama and the black leadership in Vance County is only the first step in the dream.

He was speaking to a group of Presbyterians. He had been hired to start an intentional multi-cultural Presbyterian Church. He talked about how hard it had been to get both Blacks and Whites to make the necessary accommodations for each other. Two years they had worked on it. He was beginning to think it was running smoothly and he said he looked one morning and there in the congregation was a bunch of Chinese from Taiwan where the Presbyterian church has had a long history of missionary work. They wanted to be a part of his church. He said it was like starting all over. And just when he thought that maybe they were going to make it work, he found in the congregation three or four pews full of Mexicans who had also been a part of Presbyterian mission work. They it was a group from Lebanon. Each time he about gave up because he knew how hard the work was.

Dr. King’s dream was that there would be a day when all God’s people would be judged on the conduct of their character and not the color of their skin. The Black Community is moving steadily towards taking over this community in political power, but now there is a growing minority of Hispanics moving into our area. They will have to become part of the dream. Maria Parham tells me we have a small group of Filipinos who are recruited as nurses. How do we include them in the dream?

This is an incredible day to celebrate a fantastic moment on the journey of the dream. But the day marks the transition of the dream in lots of places from a dream to a hard political agenda and the realities around us remind us there are still so many other people to bring into the dream.