A referendum on our America

Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker: “The 1963 March on Washington, held at the Lincoln Memorial during the centennial year of the Emancipation Proclamation, was at least partially a referendum on how far the nation had come. ... Malcolm X, a skeptical spectator at the march, remarked that he couldn’t see the significance of a gathering at a monument to a president who ‘ has been dead for a hundred years and who didn’t like us when he was alive.’ Martin Luther King shared little of Malcolm X’s perspective, but even his ‘ I Have a Dream’ speech made reference to a promissory note that had gone unpaid for a century. ... Yet, if there’s any measure of that march’s success, it’s to be seen in the fact that, half a century afterward, that event has itself become the reference point against which progress is measured.” Jonathan Rieder, Los Angeles Times: “How we should commemorate ‘ I Have a Dream,’ and all the events of that spring and summer. Not with self- congratulations about how far we’ve come or faith in the destiny of American democracy. Nor with hero worship of a mythologized Moses as if he alone led his people out of bondage with his golden tongue. ... The civil rights movement would first have to ‘ bring that day’ — through struggle, civil disobedience, bloody sacrifice and even death. In short, the nation most white Americans thought they lived in would not exist until black people created it.” Juan Williams, The Wall Street Journal: “Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind, written in 1962, hit No. 2 on the Billboard charts just before the crowd gathered in Washington. When the folk- music trio Peter, Paul and Mary sang the song for the 250,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial that day, it became an interracial anthem for change. ... Half a century after the lyrical promise of that inspiring music and poetry, there is the inescapable and heartbreaking contrast with the malignant, selfaggrandizing rap songs that define today’s most popular music.” Paul Eppinger, The Arizona Republic: “My daughter had graduated from Yale University and had committed to go to China to teach English in a Chinese graduate school. ... My wife, Sybil, and I traveled to China to visit her. We were met by a young Chinese communist who was appointed to be our guide. One day, he took us to the Great Wall of China. ... On top of the wall, I asked our guide where he learned English. He replied, ‘ In the university.’ ‘ But,’ I said, ‘ you don’t speak with any accent. You speak perfect English.’ ‘ I learned from memorizing the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King,’ he replied. ... This was just one year after the Tiananmen Square tragedy, and so I asked, ‘ What is your hope for China today?’ He answered with great resolve, ‘ I have great hope for China because there are thousands of us across China that still have a dream.’ ”