The telephone rang after midnight and sleep was not an option for the Rev.\u00a0Martin Luther King, Jr., after he answered it.<\/p>\n
It was late 1956. Years later, King quoted that hellish voice: \u201cNigger, we\u00a0are tired of you and your mess now. And if you aren\u2019t out of this town in\u00a0three days, we are going to blow your brains out and blow up your house.\u201d<\/p>\n
King ended up in the kitchen, meditating on the mystery of evil and\u00a0worrying about his family. He began praying out loud, voicing his feelings\u00a0of weakness, frustration and fear. Soon, he fell into a waking dream in\u00a0which God gave him comfort and courage. He glimpsed the future.<\/p>\n
The next day, King told reporters: \u201cI had a vision.\u201d<\/p>\n
This became a touchstone event and shaped one of his signature themes. But\u00a0the wording had changed by the time King reached the Lincoln Memorial on\u00a0Aug. 28, 1963. By then the voice of the Civil Rights Movement was crying\u00a0out: \u201cI have a dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
Four decades later, this speech may be the only exposure that millions ofbyoung Americans have ever had to King\u2019s preaching and writing, said Drew\u00a0Hansen, author of \u201cThe Dream,\u201d a new book that offers an in-depth analysis\u00a0of the history and content of the speech.<\/p>\n
This is sadly limited view of a complex man and his times, said the\u00a030-year-old Seattle lawyer. But many who watch or read this speech may be\u00a0inspired to learn more. After all, that is what happened to Hansen during a\u00a0Yale Law School class on civil rights. He dug deeper and what he found was\u00a0both inspiring and sobering.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s easy to focus on this speech and King\u2019s victories and all those\u00a0barriers that fell back in the days when things were so bad,\u201d said Hansen,\u00a0an evangelical Christian who graduated from Harvard and also studied\u00a0theology at Oxford University.<\/p>\n
\u201cFocusing on this speech alone is certainly a lot easier than meditating on\u00a0all of the barriers that remain. \u2026 But still, this is a wonderful place\u00a0to start as we give King the homage that is his due as a preacher, public\u00a0philosopher, field general and prophet.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is crucial to grasp the context. Hansen noted that King traveled about\u00a0275,000 miles and delivered at least 350 speeches during the year of the\u00a0March on Washington. Witnesses said he worked on the text up to the last\u00a0minute, literally marking out passages and scribbling in others as he sat\u00a0waiting to speak.<\/p>\n
Hansen\u2019s book includes material from rough drafts prepared by aides as well\u00a0as a side-by-side comparison of the text as King wrote it and then\u00a0delivered it. This includes detailed descriptions of the preacher\u2019s vocal\u00a0inflections and use of dramatic pauses and repeated sentence constructions\u00a0that let his listeners to respond to his words like skilled jazz musicians.<\/p>\n
\u201cKing knew how to read his audience,\u201d said Hansen. \u201cThat had been part of\u00a0his training since he was a little boy in his daddy\u2019s church. This address\u00a0was a case of a talented preacher getting caught up in a call-and-response\u00a0experience, not just with the audience in front of him, but with the whole\u00a0nation.\u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s why these words touched people then and they touch people now.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was supposed to have been a political speech. Yet nearly every\u00a0significant metaphor in it can be traced to a biblical source, noted\u00a0Hansen. Growing up in black Baptist churches, King had been baptized in the\u00a0words, grammar and imagery of the King James Bible. This provided a solid\u00a0foundation as he spoke to African Americans and, ironically, to white\u00a0Protestants in the Deep South. King knew that the Bible had authority \u2013authority to inspire and to judge.<\/p>\n
This is what King turned to as he faced the nation. The entire \u201cI have a\u00a0dream\u201d section of the speech was not in his written text.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wrote a political address,\u201d said Hansen. \u201cIt\u2019s not that other people\u00a0wrote a political address for him. King\u2019s own draft was nothing like a\u00a0sermon. But the speech he actually delivered was not dominated by that kind\u00a0of political language. He left lots of that out and everything he added was\u00a0rooted in biblical images and themes. That changed everything.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The telephone rang after midnight and sleep was not an option for the Rev.\u00a0Martin Luther King, Jr., after he answered it. It was late 1956. Years later, King quoted that hellish voice: \u201cNigger, we\u00a0are tired of you and your mess now. And if you aren\u2019t out of this town in\u00a0three days, we are going to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[127,231,343,678,707],"class_list":["post-1244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-black-churches","tag-civil-rights","tag-evil","tag-preaching","tag-racism"],"yoast_head":"\n