"I Have a Dream"

       Fifty years ago today, Connie and I sat in our living room in Minneapolis and watched Martin Luther King deliver his most famous speech at the March on Washington.  We knew by the time it finished it was one of the great speeches of American history.

       Listening to it in its entirety again yesterday, I think I understood more fully why.  It certainly laid claim to the rights of a people denied for so long in so many ways, and it spoke for that audience.  But just as importantly, it appealed to the whole nation on the basis of the rights promised in our founding documents:  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."  It made us see and feel how far short of America's own expressed ideals and values the country had come.