GREENBRIER COUNTY W.Va. (WVDN) – The Greenbrier Valley Martin Luther King Day Committee is honoring this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day Essay Contest winners. This edition features the entry from Myles McCormick.
The Dream
On August 28, 1963 Dr. Martin Luthar King, Jr. came to Washington to make the famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial. The speech was to stop segregation and racism. He said, quote, ”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.”
Dr Martin Luther King believed that all men are just men, no people are lower than others. He believed segregation is like an awful fire that never stops and will destroy evreything in its path.
Think of where Dr. Martin Luthur gave the speech at the Lincoln Memorial. President Lincoln abolished slavery. See the significance? Dr. Martin Luther King was a very smart man. He used the Memorial behind him as a symbol of the equal rights our founding fathers said they believed in
On August 28, 1963 not only was there the “I Have a Dream” speech but there was also the March on Washington which brought out 250,000 people. Dr Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was a very powerful speech and it had a big impact on America I think it really helped stop racism in America and helped end segregation.
However, many events led to this moment in history such as slavery, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the murder of Emmett Till, and the bus boycott begun by Rosa Parks. These things might have been a long time ago, but we still have racism.
The school I go to used to be a Black-only school called The Bolling School. There were nine teachers who were all black and taught only Black children. All of the other schools in this county were for white children only. This was an example of segregation. The Bolling School was a good school, but the children deserved to be in other schools too if they wanted.
It was very smart of Dr. Martin Luther King to make the speech at the Lincoln Memorial because Abraham Lincoln was the writer of the Emancipation Proclamation which abolished slavery. Dr Martin Luther King will go down in history as the man that had a dream.
