August 28
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."
Martin Luther King - August 28, 1968 Hear highlights at I have a dream speech or read the full text.
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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."
Martin Luther King - August 28, 1968 Hear highlights at I have a dream speech or read the full text.
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A supposition, which I'll attribute to YA until he disowns it, is that the four great defining documents of our democracy are (in chronological order):
ReplyDelete(1) The Declaration of Independence
(2) The Constitution
(3) The Gettysburg Address
(4) The "I Have a Dream" Speech
I'm inclined to agree.
I would expand my list to 5 so I can include Washington’s abdication of power following the Revolution.
ReplyDeleteThat was the one that was holding me up from confirming Rob's suggestion. See Washington at Newburgh March 15, 2011 on this blog.
ReplyDeleteTom and Wayne -- good stuff. Although the GW speech referenced in the March 15, 2011 post doesn't seem to me to directly speak to Washington's abdication of power following the revolution. Am I missing something here?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, maybe I'm too fixated on documents.
So, I'll up the ante and declare that the 7 great defining moments for our American democracy are, in chronological order...
(1) Signing of the Declaration of Independence
(2) Washington's abdication of power after the revolution (with a follow-up act after two terms as President) - thanks Tom and YA for making that case
(3) Ratifying of the Constitution
(4) The Emancipation Proclamation
(5) Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
(6) FDR's D-Day prayer/The US landing in Normandy
(7) MLK's "I Have a Dream" Speech
(I wouldn't include, say, the Civil War in this list because it wasn't a moment but a lot of moments, and anyway the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address so eloquently summarize what ultimately was "great" and "defining" about that conflict.)
I could be persuaded that the 19th amendment, giving women the right to vote, should be added to this list.
ReplyDeleteA) That was the one that was holding me up from confirming Rob's second suggestion.
ReplyDeleteB) Reminds me of my son's one word response after he announced that he no longer believed in Santa and was informed that this meant that he would not be getting any more presents from Santa: "Ooops."
C) Is there a spellbinding speech that goes with the 19th? As in Gettysburg Address or Emanc. Procl. which we have included rather than the 13th Amendment.
D) Rob: The Ratifying of the Constitution is also a collection of moments which, broadly interpreted, could include the 19th amendment.
Good observation Honoria. Yes, YA, oops. And unfortunately I cannot claim that I had the 19th amendment in mind with the ratifying of the constitution.
ReplyDeleteWhat might make the omission even worse is that I actually had a conversation in recent months with my grandmother (she's now 97) about her memories of the women's suffrage movement and how this was viewed by her mother and aunts at the time. They all resided in rural western Kentucky, which of course wasn't a hotbed of activism. I suppose this is part of the reason my grandmother doesn't recall much hoopla or tumult surrounding the moment (in contrast to her memories of the end of WWI). Of course, she was also too young at the time to experience much of the build-up. I got the feeling that for her family, the moment had something of an it's-about-time quality to it. She does, however, distinctly remember that her mother would often say, with obvious exasperation, that "the only people who aren't given the vote are criminals, fools [i.e. the mentally infirm], and women."
That said, there's part of me that sees slavery and the struggle for racial equality in the US (represented by items (4), (5), and (7) in my list) as a distinctively defining part of the American story in a way that the struggle for women's suffrage, which was something of a global movement, was not. Still, there's no doubt women's suffrage in the US was a crucially important moment in American history, and our democracy absolutely could not have advanced without it.
OK, so before I update my list to include "The women's suffrage movement and the 19th Amendment" as a new item (6)... has anyone noticed any other glaring/embarrassing omissions? Anything else I should add or omit?