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‘The human race transcends racial categories’: MLK Jr.’s niece says we can make her uncle’s dream happen

January 16, 2023 | | Print Article

As Americans enjoy a long weekend, Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., says, “We should all add more prayer to our agendas,” as we march into what is already shaping up to be a chaotic 2023.

“At the end of the day, only God knows what lies ahead for America,” King writes in an op-ed for Fox News. “Where peripherals collide, convergence is imminent — and the new year gives us an opportunity to reflect on that truth and reorient ourselves to God.”

Dr. King called the election of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R – Calif.) as Speaker of the House a “breath of fresh air,” and said that, in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, “standing firm at the state level in defense of the sanctity of life and against the radical late-term abortion proposals of the Left is more important than ever.”

Sixty years ago this August, MLK delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.


(Video: YouTube)

Dr. King called her uncle’s historic speech one that “opened the nation’s eyes and presented a vision of unity, peace, and hope to an intensely divided people.”

It’s difficult to imagine a time in our nation when those words rang more true than in today’s America. We are a nation divided along political lines — a division made worse by a media machine that leaps at the chance to throw gasoline on racial, religious, gender, and economic fires to keep us fighting each other.

Dr. King cites a quote from her uncle’s speech that embraces every American:

One line always stands out to me. In his address, he said that “when the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”

My uncle went on to declare this note was a promise “that all men [meaning all people] — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

 

“During his lifetime, as I was growing up, I could see firsthand how deeply my uncle truly believed in the promise of the American Dream,” she writes. “He did not believe our nation was irredeemably stained by racism and prejudice; instead, he laid out a vision where people could come together under our shared values and pursue one American Dream.”

While we’ve made “enormous progress” toward that dream, we are currently going backward, and according to Dr. King, it’s “horrifying.”

“Thankfully, we are finally recognizing that the human race transcends racial categories, as well all share common ancestry going back to the birth of mankind,” she writes. “It’s a spiritual and scientific fact that humanity is one blood/one human race.”

“That’s part of the reason it is so horrifying to see so much of the progress we have made get rolled back in front of our very eyes and the American Dream becoming impossible for so many,” she states.

And according to her, the blame lies with the Biden administration.

“The Biden administration has abandoned the policies that led to spectacular growth and prosperity from 2017–2019 when income growth hit record highs and poverty rates across all demographics hit all-time lows,” she writes. “Instead, the Biden administration has blindly pursued a left-wing ideological agenda that has given us decades-high inflation, skyrocketing gas prices, a crisis at the southern border, increasingly out-of-reach homeownership, failing public schools, and abortion radicalism that disproportionately targets minority communities.”

Under “America First” leadership, she argues, “we had leaders who put the uplift of forgotten communities first and a policy platform that delivered.”

“From new investments into impoverished communities through Opportunity Zones, to the First Step Act’s historic criminal justice reform, to record-lows for unemployment for minority groups, to increased funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and an embrace of school choice,” she states, “we saw the sort of policies that worked — and can work again.”

Regardless of your personal definition of “happiness,” the fact that you can pursue it in America unites us all — something that is all too easy to forget when we wrap ourselves in reactive anger and tribal politics.

It is the American Dream that brings us together and makes us strong, King notes.

“In my mind, when we unite as one people behind a shared understanding of the American Dream, there is no room left in our hearts for prejudice,” Dr. King writes. “Let’s embrace the truth that we are the one-blood human race. Our nation can never be strong, great, or independent when it fails to uphold the dignity of all God’s children, from the womb to the tomb and beyond.”

“This is the blueprint for making the American Dream accessible to every citizen today, and this is the vision we need from our leadership to unite as one people,” she continues. “Then, and only then, can my uncle’s dream be fully realized in every generation as we embrace life and human dignity from the womb to the tomb.

“Then we can join hands and sing the words my uncle proclaimed from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial nearly 60 years ago: ‘Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.'”

Melissa Fine
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