The Bible records numerous “dreams” that invaded the minds of people. In many of those “dreams” and “visions,” God revealed his plans for his chosen people and leaders. They included visions of the present and the future that affected the lives of the “dreamers” and of those to whom God would vindicate. Of kings and nations. Of prophets and preachers. Of despots and disciples. Of victims and even virgins. God spoke to situations in which his will would transcend and triumph over the lives and situations of his people. In dreams. In dreams – in nocturnal revelations that daytime declarations – God has spoken!
And it is that dream of Dr. Martin Luther King which demands our focus today. Those dynamic and spirit-piercing words that captured the hearts and minds of a people whose past and future seemed to hang on the seemingly unstable and inequitable scales of human and national justice. A “dream” that sobered some and sensitized others. A dream that saddened some and yet summoned songs of hope and reassurance many others! A dream that many others dreamed, and still a dream that others lived. A dream that also awakened hundreds of other dreamers out of their “sleep” of social unconsciousness.
I am one of those dreamers! As a junior high school “day-dreaming” teenager, my eyes were awakened by the heinous pictures of another junior high school aged teenager named Emmitt Till.
The dream began to manifest itself in my developing determination to advocate for the human rights of all people. Especially the many disenfranchised Black students and athletes in the public schools of Decatur, Illinois. The many subtle and not so subtle written, and unwritten, laws and practices that negatively impacted the opportunities for minorities to achieve and enjoy the benefits of this so-called “land of the free” and home of the brave.
It was “drive” of that dream that led me to Join the Civil Rights Movement as part of the NAACP chapter on the campus of the University of Illinois to stage literal “sit-ins” in the local campus barbershops. And to strategize and assist in the hiring of a black cashier at the main A&P grocery store in Decatur.
It was the “drive” of that dream that led me to Join the efforts of the then Civil Rights Movement leaders in Nashville, Tennessee – the Rev. Dr. Kelly Miller Smith and the Revs. C.T. Vivian, Bernard LaFayette, James Bevel and John Lewis. Like them, I was one of the students of the American Baptist Theological Seminary, and Fisk, Tennessee State University and Meharry Medical School students, and the many other student “dreamers” who participated in the Nashville Segregated Restaurant Sit-ins.
After that brutal attack on Rev. John Lewis and those others who sought to cross the Edmond Pettis Bridge, I was one of two carloads of American Baptist Seminary Students who joined with the other hundreds of demonstrators from all over the world who had converged on Selma to support the “dream!” I was one of those hundreds of demonstrators who had been arrested. Since the Selma Jail had become overcrowded, we were crowded into that “for whites only” Young Men’s Christian Association. That evening, the Selma YMCA was integrated by us.
That same evening, God enabled Black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Catholics and Protestants and Persons of other religious persuasions to engage in an International, Intercultural and Interfaith prayer meeting.
A few Years before DR. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was given, the reality of his dream was already in development. I and hundreds of thousands of other “dreamers” were able to awaken thousands of others out of their state of social, and political, and economic, and educational, and moral, and spiritual “sleep.” We, too, shared and awakened a sleeping nation with a dream that shall continue to become a reality, just as Dr. King exclaimed from the steps of the Lincoln Monument, that Saturday afternoon on Aug. 28, 1963: “I have a dream today …”
I can affirm that the dream I share with Dr. King transcends America, and embraces and includes the entire world. That dream involves another king, a king who also gave his life for the freedom of every soul. A king who, even at the point of his own death, included a doomed man who still envisioned life in the eternal presence of the king of kings. A spiritual dreamer, who received that king’s assurance that “Today, thou shalt be with me in paradise!”
That’s why Dr. King could envision, could dream, of the day when souls of every hue, and ethnicity, and social, and religious group would declare their true freedom through Jesus the Christ, the one and only savior of mankind.
That, my brothers and my sisters is also my dream. But, I wonder, what is your dream? What really is the dream that empowers and guides you and your witness in life – and for eternity?
You too will be “free at last” when you shall have overcome whatever separates and hinders your inclusion of every soul, for whom Christ died, as your brother and your sister. Then, then you and I will then be free at last! Free at last! Free at last!
Pastor Samuel W. Hale, Jr. is the former pastor of Zion Missionary Baptist Church and president of J.L. Powell Mission Ministries.
This connection between biblical dreams and Dr. King’s vision is a compelling framework. I’m particularly drawn to how you frame these visions as revealing God’s will transcending immediate circumstances. Did you find a specific moment in King’s speeches where that sense of enduring divine purpose felt most apparent?