Dear Dr. King,
In August of 1963 you marched into our nation’s capital with
extraordinary courage and vision, stood in front of the Lincoln
Memorial and delivered one of the most important speeches in our
country’s history. You said, “In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s
capital to cash a check.” I wish you had lived to see it sir—but the
check has finally been cashed, the promissory note has been made good
and we, as a nation, have honored our sacred obligation.
You said to the nation, challenging us as a people, “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.” Dr. King, your dream has been realized, that day
has come and a young black man from Illinois has been elected as
President of the United States.
You closed your speech by saying, “And when this happens, when we
allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and
every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to
speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white
men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to
join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Amen.
Respectively and with thanks,
America