One hundred and fifty years ago, President Abraham Lincoln
signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a flawed document
that freed enslaved people in Confederate areas that he did not
control. At the same time, it was a progressive document because
it initiated discussion about the “freedom” Thirteenth,
Fourteenth and Fifteen Amendments. One hundred years later, in
1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. riveted the nation with his “I
Have A Dream” speech during the August 28 March on Washington.
Many will remember that he said, “I have a dream that one day
people will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the
content of their character.” Somehow people forget that in the
same speech he said, “We have come to the nation’s capital to
cash a check that has been marked insufficient funds.” If people
said “cash the check” as often as they said “I have a dream,”
we’d move more quickly forward in closing the economic gaps that
African-American people experience. Closing the gap We’ve been
doing this 50-year t