today marks the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech. so while i’m getting ready for work this morning i turn on Good Morning America (it makes me feel all intellectual and whatnot) to hear Charles Gibson introducing Samuel L. Jackson, who is going to give his rendition of the I Have A Dream speech. “…Beautiful”, I think to myself. I love that speech. Anyway, the beauty was shattered by Charles Gibson’s little intro. Whether he wrote it or not, I don’t know, but someone should be shot on site. I can’t remember the exact wording of the whole thing, but here’s the gist:
“…40 years ago today, a quarter of a million people marched with Dr. Martin Luther King with the same vision… You could see people from the Lincoln Memorial and stretched down reflection pool… people were hanging from tree branches…”
now, I understand his need to emphasize the mass amount of people that were there, but do we REALLY need to use “hanging from a tree” as an analogy? i’m only half black and i’m offended. i’m not a big fan of lynching, or images and words that may conjure up images of lynching. i just thought it was an interesting choice of words, considering the topic was black civil rights, and Samuel L. was standing right next to him, lookin’ hard as hell in his black Kangol. hmph. maybe it’s just me