Rep. Barbara Lee: We’re still living in ‘two Americas’
/In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Stanford University to deliver the first iteration of his speech, “The Other America.” Dr. King called attention to the disparate “two Americas” in which whites and Blacks lived – one filled with potential and prosperity and the other filled with “blasted hopes and shattered dreams.”
Dr. King called attention to the disparate “two Americas” in which whites and Blacks lived – one filled with potential and prosperity and the other filled with “blasted hopes and shattered dreams.”
When Dr. King gave this speech in 1967, the Civil Rights Movement was at a turning point. Unrest in America’s cities was growing in intensity and violence, and Dr. King’s activism began tackling the root of this upheaval: economic inequality.
I hope you take the time to watch and read this very profound, uplifting speech, for it is as relevant now as it was then. It is this stage of the struggle that we are still living. Forty-eight years later, Dr. King’s economic justice agenda is largely on hold and the two Americas he spoke of are intact – particularly for people of color. [MORE]
