Letter from The Editor: 50th Anniversary of 'I Have a Dream'

Legalized segregation was a thing of the past when I was in high school.

But the kids at my school in South Florida at the dawn of the 21st century were still pretty good at segregating themselves.

There were white kids who mostly hung out with white or Hispanic kids. There were black kids who hung out in groups that were mostly composed of other black kids. The kids from the suburbs had their own cliques, and the kids from the lower income neighborhoods gravitated toward each other. Sometimes people treated me different because of my Jewish upbringing. 

In the diverse hodge-podge culture of South Florida, however, some in my high school did make friends with those who did not look or act like themselves. There were many moments of tension when one person said something about another’s race either to their face or behind their back that made it feel like there was lingering tension for some people.

It’s been 50 years since Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech advocating equality in 1963, and there’s still a lot of work to do. Inequality and segregation among all races and ages and genders still exists. 

But, now I look at kids in the Tampa Bay area and in my apartment complex and remember my little brother’s high school class in South Florida and college classes, and it makes me smile to think of the ease with which kids of different races and cultures interact and befriend each other.

My generation grew up, too, shedding a lot of the pain and bitterness for cooperation and acceptance, be it in the workplace, at home or just out in public.

On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the I Have a Dream speech, it gives me hope that things are changing to create a level playing field that offers  everyone in the U.S. an equal opportunity for prosperity and happiness.