Fulfilling ‘The Dream’

When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to Penn State students in 1965, the nation was in the midst of the civil rights movement. He said in his speech that the nation had made great strides in its struggle with racial injustice, but had much more ground to cover.

Watch the speech here. 

Only a few years after King’s death did the country see segregation disappear. It was 20 years later that King could have watched as Penn State constructed committees and days of commemoration for his accomplishments in humanity. King could have seen students on their three-day weekend coming together to celebrate freedom from repression.

He would have seen discriminatory legislation abolished and the first U.S. black president elected.

Yet has the nation fulfilled the dream of Dr. King?

Paul John, co-director of Penn State’s MLK Jr. Commemoration Student Committee, says we’re not quite there.

“I think he would be impressed by the changes that have occurred, but he would see that his dream was not yet realized,” John said.

Penn State is a place of equality, he explained, but getting here is the hard part.

“There are a lot of kids in certain communities who don’t actually have the opportunity to go to Penn State because of where they live, and they weren’t given the education that they needed to go somewhere like this,” John said, “I think that is one thing he would address.”

It’s what his colleague, Steve Suffian, calls “indirect” discrimination.

“Back in the ’60s, the oppression was obviously outright, it was institutionalized,” Suffian says of segregation laws protected by the Plessy v. Fergusen decision. “[Today] he’d probably focus more on the importance of service, helping out, building community.”

The theme for the 2010 MLK Jr. Commemoration is “Dream the Change, Lead the Change, Be the Change.” The phrase is accompanied by a picture of a dandelion, its seeds floating away.

Paul explains that the dandelion is symbolic of Dr. King’s dream. All of the seeds are different colors, and when you blow on a dandelion the seeds disperse. “But when you get down to it, it all comes from the same root,” he says. We all want the same thing.

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Alexia Miller and Maggie O’Keefe are Spring 2010 interns with StateCollege.com.