The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 5

oc The Sun Sunday, January 14, 2001: Page 5a Sng's speech forthcoming in naming some of his enemies and some of the enemies- of Justice," he said. In later years, King would sharpen his attack on economic policies that he believed did harm to the poor. These are lessons to keep iny mind, Warnock plans to say, as the.J hearings approach to confirm John Ashcroft, President-elect George W. Bush's nominee for at- torney general, whose views onf civil rights have been questioned. "There's this logic and conserva- tive movement afoot that 'Well, we ought tojust sit down and let this nomination happen in name of he said.

"If King teaches us anything, it's but call (1 .) mx i that creative noncooperatlon in'-the face of injustice Is what Is required of freedom-loving people." But perhaps the power of "I Have a Dream" is the ability of each generation to interpret and reinterpret its meaning. This weekend, Fellisco Keeling, a children's services librarian at the Hollins-Payson branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, planned to make copies of the entire "I Have a Dream" speech and have Pull test: Fellisco Keeling, a children's services librarian at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, plans to provide copies of the speech ANDRE r. CHUNQ SUN STAFF Hollins-Payson branch of the this weekend. them available for people to read. "We've all heard parts of it," she said.

"But the whole thing is so wonderfully done, I thought people need to read the whole thing." 4 There's a message, she said, for the children most of whom have not ventured much beyond the neighborhood, and who come to a library near where drugs are sold. "That most of the time life isn't easy," said Keeling, a librarian for 26 years, most of them in that building. "And yet, in spite of the; 1 hardships, we can find waysi around those hardships. And we- i can find ways, not only to make our 4 lives better. But when we make our 1 1J.

1 Li- nM-n Mn1rA 4-list missed By the end of the 16-mlnute address, King had moved the world. "It was electrifying," recalled the Rev. Marlon Bascom, a civil rights veteran and director of the Morgan Christian Center, who was among the crowd of 200,000 that day along with other Baltimore pastors. "He was putting into intellectual focus the highest and the noblest of the American tradition. And in that, he was also pulling together the accumulated hopes and dreams of every civilized people." In fact, King had previously used the "I have a dream" theme.

"It was a stump speech. He'd given it before," said Warnock, who wrote a thesis on King. "But that day, it connected in an especially kind of visceral way." As King finished, a young man standing to King's left, who was serving as volunteer security for the event, approached him. "I said, 'Dr. King, could I have that recalled George Raveling, who went on to become basketball coach at the University of Iowa and the University of Southern California.

"And he turned and handed it to me." Raveling kept the speech tucked inside a book for years. It is now In a bank vault and will eventually be passed on to his son. Speech called one of best "I Have a Dream" was rated the greatest political speech of the 20th century In a survey of 137 speech and communications professors conducted a year ago. They ranked more than 500 speeches on their historical impact and rhetorical artistry. "I think it would be fair to say It was the runaway choice," said Stephen Lucas, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of communication arts and co-author of the study.

Part of what makes it so great, he said, is the issue it addresses. E. B. DuBois said the great moral problem of the 20th century Community Church, the church where Bascom was once pastor, said he will preach this morning on "A Nation's Amnesia." He said he is tired of seeing the speech used by conservatives, as when it was part of a video at the Republican National Convention this past summer. "People forget that in that speech he is very forthright and CDSC 3 revered, action Speech, from Page 1a tique have been blunted.

"King has certainly been sanitized and domesticated and therefore distorted," said the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, the newly elected pastor of Douglas Memorial Community Church In West Baltimore, who plans to preach on King's message this morning. "Selected sound bites are played and become part of the public memory of King. So people whose Ideological orientation is clearly antithetical to that of King can mouth pious platitudes in honor of King while arguing for policies King would never have supported." Words from the heart King, who would fall to an assassin's bullet on April 4, 1968, delivered his famous speech at the March on Washington, a rally that mobilized African-Americans and civil rights activists from across the country.

The event is remembered as an uplifting moment in the nation's history, but the atmosphere that day was tense because many in Washington were convinced the gathering would result in a riot. "In Washington, authorities from all sectors guarded against the possibility that marauding Negroes might sack the capital like Moors or Visigoths reincarnate," wrote Branch in "Parting the Waters," the first volume, published in 1988, of his King trilogy. Branch, noted that liquor sales there were banned for the first time since Prohibition, hospitals canceled elective surgery, and the Washington Senators baseball team, postponed games for two King, who worked on the draft of the history-making speech the night before at the Willard Hotel, had been limited to seven minutes by march organizers, as had all speakers, and wrote what would become merely the first part of his address. In it, he spoke of a promissory note by the nation's founding fathers guaranteeing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, a note that to the nation's blacks was "a bad check that has come back marked 'insufficient Coming to the end of his prepared text, overwhelmed by the moment and the response of the crowd, King began to preach. He told the crowd, "Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can be changed." And then, continuing his improvisation, he began the refrain that still echoes In the ears of a nation: "I have a dream self.

"There has become a mythic quality to the March on Washington," Lucas said. "I think it was the high water mark of the nonviolent civil rights movement." Some argue the high water mark resulted In the adoption of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Attack on injustice Many who admire "I Have a Dream" are inspired by its message of hope and optimism. But some of those who most admire it, particularly African-Americans, worry that the message of hope overshadows King's denunciation of social, racial and economic injustice, a charge that they say still rings true. "It was not just a speech.

It was dreams unfulfilled and unmet to which he was speaking," Bascom said. "He made it sound good enough to believe it could happen, and many of us did believe it could happen. Unfortunately, the racism that runs rampant in the world makes the dream almost appear nightmarish. "I would say this," Bascom said. "I wish that I had the high optimism today that I had then." Warnock of Douglas Memorial t.t orig age mtes at 2-year imw 'I Have a Dream' To read the complete text of the Rev.

Martin Luther King "I Have a Dream" speech and hear his words, go to The Sun's Web site: www.sunspot.net Is the problem of the color line. It was true when DuBois said it, it was true a century before that, and it's still the central moral issue of American life a century after DuBois said it. The issue is seared into the public consciousness." Great speeches require great enemies, said Richard Vatz, a Tow-son University professor of political rhetoric, and King's speech had one. "One of the reasons there seems to be an absence of great speeches in the latter part of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century is that we don't have any great enemies anymore," Vatz said. "You can have great speeches in the Nazi era because Nazism is an unquestioned evil.

You can have great speeches like Martin Luther King's because discrimination against African-Americans cannot be justified. It's a great evil." And there was the occasion it- Still waiting for that rainy day? Knowing where to sell your old jewelry is as important as knowing where to buy it. To discuss the disposition of your unwanted jewelry and diamonds one piece or ah estate make an appointment with J. Brown's today. uvea ueiter, we until iiitmc uic uvea ui uLiieia uetxci 1 4 0 1 -m a 3 "tft'i-w: MisF A 1- is.

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