Issue date: 1/20/09 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Chris Griffin [Click to enlarge]

Like many American sixth-graders, I learned about Martin Luther King Jr. while watching the grainy black-and-white video of the "I Have a Dream Speech" in a brightly decorated classroom. I didn't fully comprehend pre-algebra that year, but I understood that Martin Luther King Jr. was important as I gazed, cheek-in-hand, at the screen and listened to that baritone voice declare, "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 the content of their character."

Little did I know that I would watch King's dream come to pass 10 years later not only in color but in High Definition. Even before President Barack Obama cuts the commencement tape, he brings a new era of social justice to America, thus cementing King's dreams. Despite individual politics, reservations or skin color, it's important to realize that the sacrifices Martin Luther King Jr. and others made were necessary to arrive at the election of our nation's first black president.

Forty-five years ago, the struggle for the vote escalated on the streets of Selma, Ala. In 1965,, about 50 percent of Selma's population was black, yet only 1 percent of those citizens were registered. Jim Crow insured that voting was nearly impossible for black Americans.

The laws mandated segregation in all public facilities, with the ridiculous "separate but equal" status for black Americans and members of other minority groups. Voter registrar offices were only open twice a month with unpredictable hours of operation, and those who waited hours in line at the office were not guaranteed registration.

Out of undemocratic conditions in Alabama, hundreds of blacks and white sympathizers marched peacefully out of Selma one day. Sheriff "Bull" Connor and his police officers met the group and brutally assaulted the protestors with water cannons, clubs, whips and tear gas. President Lyndon B. Johnson, fed up with the bloodshed spawned from bigotry, introduced the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to Congress two days later, which made discrimination based on race illegal.

It took two more marches and the addition of National Guard protection for the nonviolent protestors to reach the Alabama capital, Montgomery. This is just one example of civil rights history, but it shows how much has changed since King reigned. Due to the accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement, many black leaders have taken offices across the U.S., including Edward Brooke, Jesse Jackson, Thurgood Marshall, Colin Powell, and of course Barack Obama, the 44th president of the U.S.

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