It’s been 45 years 7 months and 20 days since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood atop the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in our nation’s capital and delivered the speech that changed the world. America boasts equality for all but is that what we really mean, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal.”

He delivered his speech in the shadow of the man who freed the slaves and on August 28, 1963 Abraham Lincoln posthumously bared witness to the event that would pave the way for equal rights for all, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of the most famous speeches of all time, I Have a Dream. “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”

And as a sit wondering what we can do to reclaim his dream in 2009 I realize what we have already done as a country not as whites or blacks or Hispanics or Asians but as Americans. Our country together as Americans, together we stand divided we fall. We have come a long way from one race owning another; to all races working together we have come within reaching distance of his dream. “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

2 months and 4 days ago millions of Americans made their choice and completed the story that’s been 233 years in the making we as Americans elected a black as president of our United States. Barrack Obama will be sworn in as President of the United States of America on January the 20, 2009 officially proving that the greatest nation in the world can be lead by a man of color. “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.”

But what about what we haven’t yet accomplished in this great nation, equal pay for all races and sexes, equal opportunity employment for Americans and foreigners alike. Or even what we can accomplish outside our nation’s borders, ending the genocide in Africa, stopping the spread of AIDS before it becomes a world destroying epidemic, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, clothing the poor, anything and everything we can do to help human kind. “And when this happens, when we allow freedom 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!”