On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, US, Rosa Louise Parks refused to obey the bus driver James F. Blake’s order that she give up her seat in the colored section (segregated and marked for black seating) to a white passenger, after the white section was filled. Parks refused. She was not the first person to resist bus segregation. Others had taken similar steps in the twentieth century, including Irene Morgan in 1946, Sarah Louise Keys in 1955, and many others earlier.

Parks’ act of defiance and the Montgomery Bus Boycott became important symbols of the modern civil rights movement in US. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organised and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr, a new pastor in town who gained national prominence in the civil rights movement. Later the US Congress called Parks “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement”. Parks gave the US civil rights movement a new lease of life that ultimately culminated with August 28, 1963 when Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., would make this immortal speech ‘I have a dream’ on the Mall, in front of Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. This year the day was the 50th anniversary and was remembered across America by the people who still consider King to be one of the greatest Americans to have made his place in history. A half-century to the hour after Martin Luther King, Jr, told the people of his dream from the steps of Lincoln Memorial, it was the nation’s first US black President Obama who stood on that hallowed marble step, on the same day, to the hour, hailing the 50 years of racial progress that made his election possible but warning Americans that King’s dream remains unfulfilled. Though segregation today is a distant memory in US and White House has a black President, still much of the economic and social conditions of minorities of all kinds, including the African Americans remain as it was half a century back, the time when America was passing through one of the darkest patches of its history.

After the abolition of slavery most of the Southern States practised when it came to the black Americans the policy of ‘separate but equal.’ This meant that a black could not sit in the same class room with other white pupils or ride the same bus sitting along side with the white passengers. Some schools permitted black students to attend classes but fenced him off from the whites. Some, like the prestigious University of Texas Law School avoided admitting blacks. Stores and restaurants hung signs outside ‘blacks not allowed.’ The blacks were denied voting rights. They were known as Negros or more commonly Niggers and availability of facilities for any sort of education to them was not nonexistent, and practically all of the races were illiterate. They were subjected to humiliation and intimidation by their white fellow citizens on any pretext. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwernet, three young men came to Neshoba Country in Mississippi to enlist their names in the voters list could never make it as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) the ultra racist organisation stopped their car with help of the country police and shot all of them in close range and buried them under a dam (the 1988 movie Mississippi Burning is based on the incident).

To make their voices heard to the people in the Washington DC the civil rights activists on August 28, 1963 along with 250,000 supporters of whom about one fifth were whites marched to DC and under a near cloudless sky stood near the Lincoln Memorial to rally for ‘jobs and freedom.’ The roster of speakers included speakers from nearly every segment of society-labour leaders like Walter Reuther, clergy, film stars such as Sidney Poitier and Marlon Brando and folksingers such as Joan Baez. Each of the speakers were allotted fifteen minutes, but the day belonged to the young and charismatic leader Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, originally prepared a short and somewhat formal recitation of the sufferings of his people, the blacks. He was about to sit down when the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, present amongst the audience called out, ‘Tell them about your dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream!’ Encouraged by shouts from the audience, King drew upon some of his past talks, and the result became the landmark statement of civil rights in America -- a dream of all people, of all races and colours and backgrounds, sharing in an America marked by freedom and democracy. King did not have a dream to became a political leader or enter the White House. His dream was very simple; all about treating all Americans, irrespective of caste, creed, colour or religion equal in the eye of law. King concluded his speech saying “And when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and city we will be able to speed up that day when all God’s children -- black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants -- will be able to join hands and to sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last; thank Almighty, we are free at last.’” King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee presumably by James Earl Ray with KKK connections. There are many conspiracy theories about King’s killing involving government connections, but never to be proved.

This August 28th was unlike the one fifty years back. It was drizzling lightly and the air was damp and soggy but thousands turned up to pay homage to the great hero. Among those attending were former President Bill Clinton and celebrity Oprah Winfrey and a few other Democrat lawmakers. However, not a single Republican lawmakers thought it necessary to attend; unfortunately signalling the coming of a divided America. After Obama finished paying his tribute to King, Eleanor Holmes Norton, the DC’s nonvoting Congressional Delegate and one of the organisers of the original march talked to Washington Post and marveled at the turnout on a wet and muggy workday. “Fifty years ago, we had to convince the president to let us come. Today, the president is coming to us,” she exulted.

How have the American blacks changed since the days of King? Well though more blacks are going to school and entering job, still the economic disparities separating blacks and whites remain as wide as they were when marchers assembled on the Mall fifty years back. The unemployment rate of blacks has constantly been twice than the unemployment rate of whites for fifty years. The gap in household income between black and white has not narrowed during this time. In fact the wealth disparity between whites and blacks grew even wider during the great recession of 2006-7. Today black children are more likely than whites to live in areas of concentrated poverty. There has been a self-imposed segregation in the school system. Kings ‘dream’ still remains illusive. Today more non-white Americans lives in sense of insecurity and feels they are being unethically and immorally snooped upon. They are susceptive of falling victim to senseless ‘sting operations.’ But still people look towards America because this is a country that produced world class visionary leaders like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. In a unipolar world they have more responsibility for peace at home and abroad. Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize even before he could get acquainted with the geography of White House. People pinned much hope in him and when he spoke before the same Lincoln Memorial before he entered the White House for the first time. But the day when President Obama spoke to commemorate the march to Mall by King and his colleagues the people in the Middle East and elsewhere prayed that there will be no more war in the region. Today it is not the question of blacks and whites or the rich and the poor it is all about humanity, justice and sanity.

Every time I have the opportunity to visit Washington DC, I make it a point to stand in same stairs where once King stood and told the world ‘I have a dream’ and remember him in silence. A year back I had the opportunity to board the same bus in the Henry Ford museum in Chicago where once Parks was humiliated. This year I pray in silence for all those who sacrificed so much for the betterment of mankind.

The writer is a former

Vice-chancellor, University of Chittagong. uf