Barack Obama was two years old when Martin Luther King --
standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial -- declared, "I have a
dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by
the content of their character." Mr. Obama's generation is the
generation on which Dr. King's hopes were riding. It is not too
much of a stretch to conclude that -- even after "the searing
injustice" in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina -- King, upon
hearing Obama's speech in Philadelphia, would have nodded in
agreement: "I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges
of our time unless we solve them together -- unless we perfect
our union by understanding that we may have different stories,
but we have common hopes; that we may not look the same and we
may not have come from the same place, but we all have to move
in the same direction -- towards a better future for our
children and our grandchildren." But Obama did more than
reaffirm King's core convict