 "Photo: Chris Griffin")
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.
The size and wealth of the black middle class has increased dramatically in the last several decades. Oprah Winfrey is one of the wealthiest, most influential people in the world. Will Smith is a highly regarded Hollywood actor. A life-size poster of Michael Jordan hung on my bedroom wall throughout my childhood as I watched his gravity defying leaps with awe. It is finally possible for any American to become an actor, doctor, lawyer, writer, artist or astronaut and, get this - even president. What would Martin Luther King Jr. have to say of this "post-racial" America?
NPR news analyst Daniel Schorr defined post-racial America as an era "where civil rights veterans of the past century are consigned to history and Americans begin to make race-free judgments on who should lead them." Schorr contemplated whether Obama's popularity transcends race into a new post-racial America, wondering whether a post-Selma generation consisted of color-blind voters who judged others on their character alone.
I fear that the hype of this historic election has allowed many journalists and scholars to term this era "post-racial" prematurely. Must we forget the battles Americans fought to combat prejudice in order to reach a nation that transcends race?
When I look at America through King's perspective, I see a young country that has just learned to walk. As a lifeguard last summer, I watched a group of young children playing in the pool together. An observing dad roughly yelled for his children to come play near him on the other side of the pool. Seeing this, a young black girl commented to her siblings in an angry tone, "He just didn't want them to play with the black kids."
The nation has not yet become color-blind in the way King envisioned. Though equality has improved since King's time, there is still much that needs to change. Today is a day where progress can be celebrated. Today, in the words of Obama, Americans have proven that "we are the change that we seek."
Christen Beck is a senior political science major.
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