Quote: Martin Luther King

“If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.”

- Martin Luther King (1929-1968)

Speech:Martin Luther King / I Have a Dream

This is a speech that never fails to give me goose bumps when I hear it, probably one of the greatest speeches ever made in history, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jnr "I Have a Dream" Speech. It is worth taking the time to read and, for those willing to spend a bit of additional time, to listen to it at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm I find that it works best to play the audio (instead of watching the video) and to read the text on that same page as the audio is playing.

In 1963 Native Americans were in a lousy position.Oppressed, discriminated against, segregated. Denied basic rights that we take for granted, I recall regularly seeing news broadcasts of police beating up men, women and children on peaceful marches. Black churches were bombed. In Mississippi black advocates for equality were murdered. Is it any wonder that there was a militant backlash advocating black violence, black power and revolution.