I just read Dr. Martin Luther King’s last speech out loud.
It was an enthralling experience. Uplifting, inspiring, and a bit depresssing to realize what has not happened, the persistence of racism and poverty and inequality, the scoundrels who distort his message and try to prevent the honest teaching of our history. The racist legislators who say that teaching honest history is a “divisive concept” that will make white children uncomfortable. That assumes they will identify with the oppressors. That assumes that the truth will make them woke. I assume they willl identify with the oppressed and join with those who want change.
Read it. Out loud.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Read it. Out loud. In my classroom as more than worthy interlude between grading sets of papers.
Powerful. Deeply thoughtful. It’s not about what happens to me if I do this. It’s about what happens to them if I do not.
We have traveled far, but we have a long, long way to go.
May those with power read these words. And may those without power gather together…and continue to improve things by the power of their multitude.
Thank you for this assignment, Diane.
My pleasure, truly.
It moved me.
I wanted to share.
Amen.
The “long white robes over yonder” are the Proud Boys marches of today. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Thanks for this post.
Have been watching the ATLANTA Ebenezer Baptist Church MLK Jr Ceremonies today, with Sen. Warnock and many dignitaries (10 – 1pm).
3 hours of a moving ceremony.
Speech by Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative (@eji_org) in Montgomery, AL, was exceptional and he addressed the current trends of banning the Truths because someone may feel uncomfortable. He talked about publicly identifying victims & families by the NAZIS during the Holocaust, by placing ‘Stolpersteine’ (brass plaques) outside of victims’ homes all across Germany & Europe. (@Stolpersteine)
He’s been amazed how Germany & other countries in Europe are facing the evil TRUTH and not doing what the US is currently doing.
He strongly addressed the US avoidance of US History, we must talk & teach about THE TRUTH to foster change.
I watch the ATL ceremonies every year. Pres Biden spoke yesterday, Sunday service, at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Diane, thanks for sending out MLK’s last speech. I read it out loud with leftover tears from the last 3 hours of MLK ceremonies in ATL.
It is emotional, important and always sad. All these experiences take me back immediately to the sad & tumultuous days of Jim Crow South,
working with and learning from Isabella Holmes in APS – mother of Dr. Hamilton Holmes, he integrated UGA in 1962.
1968 – RFK, MLK, Vietnam…….
1970 – Kent State & Jackson State…..
As educators, we cannot let REP lie about our history, hide the truth, punish teachers, ban books, and make endless laws to hide our evil.
We can’t allow it!
Thank you.
Amen to that
@stolpersteine
Thanks for posting. I thought it was interesting for several reasons. Sounds like a long time ago. Sounds like yesterday.
Dr. King would have been appalled (but not surprised) by the Democrats’ handling of the railroad workers.
He would be appalled by the way conservatives use his name and words to ban teaching about racism.
He had some things to say about liberals too. And if he were alive today you’d lump him in with all the other leftist agitators you don’t like.
Dienne,
I attended the March on Washington in 1963. His close aide Bayard Rustin was a good friend. Why would I consider him a leftist agitator? I didn’t then and I don’t know. You need an attitude adjustment. And if you insult me again, I will block you.
The irony there is horrific.
And go buy a copy of Robin Lithgow’s wonderful new book Lessons from Shakespeare’s Classroom, a really important call for placing PERFORMANCE at the center of our pedagogy in order to produce brighter, more capable, more engaged citizens. Chock full of amazing revelations. Brimming with Robin’s wisdom and wit. And illustrated (also with great wit) by her brother, the brilliant actor John Lithgow.
Treat yourself.
Brilliance seems to run in this family.
Performance is a double edged sword.
Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Elon Musk are also performance artists.
It’s what you perform, not how you perform it that really matters.
This is one of those rare instances when I completely disagree with you, more about style than intent. In my first year of teaching, I did exactly what you propose–read them the speech (to 6th and 8th graders). Being a young punk teacher who knew it all, I thought it would be an inspiring idea. But it was more for me than them and fell flat. I realized nothing replaces an actual viewing of MLK Jr.’s entire speech. Hearing his oratory is something of which we would be robbing our children. That is unthinkable. No oral reading can replace or replicate that.
That speech was a stump speech of sorts, one he had been telling for years with slight nuances and changes here and there. It was an internalized narrative, not a written speech. It was a spontaneous expression of well-worn ideas and rhetoric. But like a musician who plays the same song thousands of times, there are performances that outshine all the others, that are more meaningful.
I would suggest a day of explaining why those words were necessary then, why–despite the progress made since then–in many ways things are as bad or worse than they ever were. Drive through parts of Mississippi, Louisiana, and other parts of this nation from ocean to ocean and try to tell me things have improved. But most of all, in this media age when kids’ eyes are glued to screens for far too long, this is THE exception to the rule. No out loud reading of this speech can come close to the real thing. That’s why Mahalia Jackson’s “Tell them about the dream, Martin” is as eloquent and important as anything he said when he laid aside his prepared speech.
Thank you, GregB.
Listening to the entire speech is incredibly powerful no matter how often I hear it. It is a barometer, a baseline of how far we’ve come and how much is still ahead of us & how much we lose when democracy teeters on the edge due to the shortcomings of humanity. This is not ancient History, this is as relevant TODAY as it was in 1963, and hundreds of years ago. We can never be quiet, allow the banning of books, curriculum, or speech for any group.
Powerful words from Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to live by and protect for everyone today.
Our students have a right to hear it in entirety and be given the opportunity to be moved by the moment and its importance, today and every day. Developing a conscience is learned and reinforced from people with a conscience, and allowed to live and flourish in a society with a conscience. None of this happens accidentally. We must choose civility, decency, honesty and love for one another.
Another problem is that MLK Jr’s legacy is too closely tied, for lack of a better term, to “Black America.” He was American and espoused American ideas not bound by race or any other category. Of course there’s a slippery slope here that allows the right to co-opt and distort his beliefs, as the right is doing. But this too must be resisted and pointed out at every possible instance.
Here’s a nice footnote to illustrate this, from Fred Kaplan’s biography of John Quincy Adams, who was considered by a Southern opponent to be “the acutest, the astutest, the archest enemy of Southern slavery that ever existed.”