COMING WEDNESDAY Fred Rodgers had just celebrated his 18th birthday and had moved from Alabama to Chicago when he watched Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the evening news. The TV set was a black and white, Rodgers recalls, but it might as well have been in color, “it was that vivid.” The Civil Rights Movement had already lit the fire of this young man who had grown up attending rallies and listening to the stories of family friend Abraham Lincoln Woods, the organizer behind all of King’s marches, including the historical one on Aug. 28, 1963. But that speech King made in front of the Lincoln Memorial a half-century ago transcended “any other emotion I had ever felt,” says Rodgers, now retired director of youth services for the City of Aurora. “It was as if “the whole world got it … There was a feeling of new hope not seen before.” King’s speech, its 50th anniversary celebrated today, impacted Rodgers so profoundly “it was like rolling thunder,” he recalls. “And it shaped my entire life. Read what local black leaders recall of this historical speech in my Wednesday column.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 22:55:06 +0000
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