Renewing the Dream

Eighteen steps from the top landing of the Lincoln Memorial, at the spot where Martin Luther King Jr. stood to deliver “I Have a Dream,” a small inscription is carved into the stone:

I HAVE A DREAM
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOR JOBS AND FREEDOM
AUGUST 28, 1963

Millions of visitors walk past it each year. Many step on it. Few stop. It is worn, weathered, and easy to miss: the quiet remnant of one of the loudest moral summonses in American history.

For more than a decade, my friend Daryl Davis has called attention to this neglected marker. He helped me see that renewing the place where King stood is about more than commemorating a moment in history. It is about renewing the promise King challenged America to make good on.

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson declared that “all men are created equal.” Eighty-seven years later, at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln reminded a nation at war that it had been “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” A century later, Martin Luther King Jr. called on America to “live out the true meaning of its creed.”

Both Lincoln and King saw our nation clearly: its failures, its hypocrisies, its capacity for cruelty, and, most importantly, its capacity for renewal.

America has made extraordinary progress. Yet we are still falling short of the ideals Jefferson proclaimed, Lincoln fought to defend, and King demanded we fulfill. Too much of our public life today is built on contempt. Racism, antisemitism, and other forms of bigotry remind us how easily we lose sight of our shared humanity. We sort one another by color, class, party, religion, education, and zip code. We are told that identity is destiny, that disagreement is hatred, that forgiveness is weakness, and that the past is either spotless or unforgivable.

In such an atmosphere, King’s dream can sound naïve. It was nothing of the kind. What King offered was disciplined hope and a way forward.

Brotherhood is one of the most powerful words in our civic vocabulary.

King did not ask Americans to pretend injustice did not exist; he confronted it. He did not ask black Americans to wait politely for their rights; he demanded them. But he also called Americans to something greater than coexistence.

He called us to see one another as brothers and sisters.

Brotherhood is one of the most powerful words in our civic vocabulary. It asks us to extend dignity and grace without prejudice: to the immigrant trying to belong, the police officer on a dangerous street, and the neighbor with the wrong yard sign. All are part of “We the People.”

King’s dream was not blindness to history or indifference to injustice. It was a moral standard that asks us to see each person not as a proxy for a group, but as a unique individual with inherent value.

That dream remains unfinished, but it has helped move our country forward.

There is a temptation, especially on anniversaries, to treat great speeches as artifacts of history rather than challenges for the present. “I Have a Dream” remains a challenge to all Americans to redeem the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution:

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”

Renewing the dream starts with us.

When our children learn the truth about slavery and segregation without teaching some to feel shame about the past and others to feel hopeless about the future. When citizens can argue fiercely without denying one another’s humanity. When we have the confidence to say that improving this country is our shared responsibility.

On this sixty-third anniversary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, we can do more than remember his dream. We can renew it. Renew the promise he invoked. Renew the commitments that make brotherhood possible.

A worn inscription on a stone step can be renewed. So can trust. So can the spirit of brotherhood.

Jefferson proclaimed the ideal. Lincoln fought to defend it. King demanded that America make good on it. Now the choice belongs to us. We can continue to let that promise go unfulfilled, or we can remember where King stood and renew the dream together as Americans.

Bion Bartning is an entrepreneur and investor and co-founder of the Prohuman Foundation with Daryl Davis and Letitia Kim.

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Learn more about our goal to restore the MLK marker and advance a culture of brotherhood over division:

Learn about Renewing the Dream