Dear Dr. King,
I recently read the entire speech you gave at Cornell College on October 15, 1962 and find myself wondering if you would be disappointed in today’s society were you still to be living. I also think it is something that everyone should read. I read it not necessarily in the context solely of race relations, but in the context of human relations in general. I found myself questioning, fifty some odd years later, whether or not we truly have integrated and/or whether or not we have kept ourselves segregated and I do not even think I mean racially. There is one quote in particular that stands out to me to still be true today. You said “I’m convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don’t know each other and they don’t know each other because they don’t communicate with each other, and they don’t communicate with each other because they are separated from each other”. In sadness I say, I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment, although, I think the separations are far more than race in today’s world and that scares me.
The one quote that comes to my mind, that I have been thinking of daily for some time now, that I missed seeing in your speech, is the last sentence of our Declaration Of Independence “we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor”. As you know many of the signers kept that pledge to each other. I shake my head wondering what happened to us and when. The first person I suppose I will put blame on for the hatred and separations in today’s society is me. Not that I have not loved, whom I could love in my life, as I think I have done that pretty well, including my enemies or those who have done me harm. Rather maybe because I lived in a bubble, as I think we all do, and did not really take the time to see, hear, feel, and understand what was going on outside of it.
You mentioned you loved the idea of democracy, and I might even say the republic instead of democracy, and you also loved, although flawed, America. I am not so sure that many actually even love America today. And this I blame on the two that you said must work together to integrate us; education and legislation. I have not at this point figured out if one has gone to far, and the other not far enough, or neither has gone far enough, or both have gone to far. All I know for sure is both have failed us. Whether it be in the quests for power, greed, ill will, whatever the reason, our governments seek more to control us, than to integrate us. And our education system does not even teach civics anymore, nor the Constitution, or Declaration of Independence. If most Americans do not know where the quotes “that all men are created equal” or “that all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights” even come from, never mind what those rights truly are, how are we to integrate and save the America that you loved and that I love. I think you would be mortified if you knew that one thing that they do teach in school is that violence is okay and a means to an end.
You are truly right when you say “poverty and ignorance breed crime whatever the racial group may be”. That is why I not only started to educate myself, but little by little I am standing up as you say good willed people need to do. I am also trying to pass on what I am learning or have learned, no matter the subject or how small an item it may be. It is my promise that I will do what I can to no longer divide, but instead to integrate as fast as I can. Because I too have a dream, that everyone should be equal, that faith should help guide us, and that love for our country and each other, above all else should prevail.
Thank you for having your dream and being a pioneer. You are missed by many.
With Love,
Laura Standrowicz