At times, I am grateful for the reminders I have in excerpts from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech: 

"In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force."

Just the other day, I was shopping in my neighborhood grocery store. I was reaching up on a high shelf to retrieve a diabetic supplement when I accidentally knocked some protein bars to the floor. An elderly lady scolded me in a teasing way. When she saw what I was putting in my shopping cart, she remarked that diabetes was a disease of black people.

With the sweetest smile on her face, she said to me, “I am so glad I’m not black!” Believe it or not I decided to overlook her comment, and we joked about other things. As we parted ways, she added, “One thing I love about you blacks is your sense of humor.”

Another shopper walked up to me a little later and commented on the gracious way I chose to handle the incident. I shrugged it off because I was convinced the old woman had no idea how offensive her remarks were to me. Furthermore, I bet some of her best friends are black and that she believed prejudice was a thing of the past.

She had reminded it me that it was not. When Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream speech” and during the height of the civil rights movement I was barely three years old. I have only a vague of memories of his funeral on television.

For Collin Professor Eugene Foley, he cannot forget the days during the civil right movements when President Kennedy was shot and the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was shot.

“When Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, I was the only black teacher employed at a middle school located in a suburban community outside of Detroitm," Foley said. "The only black student that attended the school was enrolled in my eighth grade math class. When the news [about Martin Luther King’s death] broke, the principal came to my room and recommended that I leave the building and asked me if I would drive the black student to her home in Detroit.”

Not many can share such poignant memories of the civil rights movement or of King’s assassination. Collin’s Director of Operating Systems Jessie Abbott White was also very young when King’s assassination took place.

Yet, Abbott recounts, “I can vividly remember the sadness that flooded my home and my neighborhood. I remember my mom, one who was known not to cry, actually crying. [I think] MLK was the modern day Moses who was ‘gunned-down’ before his mission was completed. As a result of his death during the ‘high-point’ of his mission, America took several giant steps backwards in the Civil Rights movement. So far, America has not recovered from the loss or the upset in progress that took place more than 30 years ago.”

According to Professor Cathy Donald-Whitney, if Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today one issue would be at the forefront of his crusade.  

“Unfortunately, the issue would be the same, inequality.”

In her opinion, “[King] was truly an awesome man of God. He was a great role model, pastor, community leader.”

Abbott-White agrees that inequality would be the primary issue in King’s crusade.

However, Professor Foley believes that King’s modern day crusade would include “the current war and the amount of homelessness in the United States.” As an expert on American social history and the American South, Collin’s Dr. Kyle Wilkison believes he knows where King was headed politically: “Over the next 10 years he moved steadily leftward toward an embrace of a total non violent critique of oppression and violence in any guise. King was actively focusing on trying to build a working class movement that would reach out to poor whites as well as blacks.”

Many people see the need for a modern day King figure in the fight for equality and other civil rights issues. In fact, Collin professors offer a myriad of responses.

Donald-Whitney concludes, “We have not transitioned into the society of unity in diversity that was the essence of [King’s] dream!”

“The fight for civil rights and the importance of the realization that everyone is created equal to me would require everyone around the world to become a modern King,” Foley said. “We cannot advocate freedom around the world until we embrace freedom within the United States in words and in deeds.”

Who do you see today that you would consider a modern day King? Many choose Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton because they are ministers and civil rights activists. Some say that no one is as unique as King was.

For me, I don’t know if I recognize any one man or woman as a modern King. I believe I have a responsibility to be a modern King in my little corner of the world. Yes, it would have been easy to come up with a clever remark to put that prejudiced old lady in her place. But, what good would that have done? You see, I, too, have a dream. I dream that one day every man and woman will be judged by the intent of their heart, by the sincerity of their soul, and by the sweat of their brow but never by the color of their skin.