Dr. Martin Luther King

A Primal Force of Dignity

Soccer player's foot pointed to a star

I’ve wept more than once with feelings I find hard to name as I take in the USA women’s World Cup championship. 

I search my memory.  Have I ever witnessed anything akin to it in spirit: women as a unit representing a primal force of dignity?  

The closest I can come occurred in 1963.  I was 19.

I watched Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech live on TV with a dozen or so African American cleaning ladies in the day room of a bachelor officer’s quarters on Fort Bragg, North Carolina, mine the only white face in the group.  

"The push to change the words “nigger” and “injun” in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, because the so-called offensive nature of those terms might limit today’s readership and appreciation of that literary classic, is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on how we avoid taking responsibility for our feelings––and therefore miss the chance to become more awake, more whole, more useful friends to one another."

The Essay: The Gold in Niggers and Injuns