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| Bronze Statue in the United States Capital - photo from my family's D.C. trip August 2013 |
"Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: - "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I haven't organized my photos or my reflections on the fabulous road trip that my family and I went on this month to Washington D.C. However, I couldn't see a time more appropriate to share my photos from the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial than on the 50th anniversary of his famous and important speech at the March on Washington, "I have a Dream". I pray and hope that in the next 50 years and for future generations that people can continue to make progress and change in our culture that create equality and equity for all people no matter their race, ability, sexuality.
"The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice"
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| Photo taken at the National Memorial of Martin Luther King Jr. - Aug 2013 |
Unfortunately, the memorial when we visited was still being completed and had 24 hours of construction workers to have it completed by today's 50th anniversary, so all of my photos of this memorial had scaffolding around and the mountain out of white stone that he is carved out of was not visible. It beautifully overlooks the tidal basin and is across from the Thomas Jefferson memorial who was one of the primary writers of the Declaration of Independence and the third President of the United States. Jefferson himself owned slaves and after visiting his home in Monticello, it became clear to me that arguably one of his biggest accomplishments but also a source of personal moral turmoil was his participation in owning slaves and running a plantation. In conjunction; how Jefferson held great personal regret of the mistreatment and inequality that non-white people received in this country through his lifetime, but near the end of his life stated, "this will be a problem for the future generations to solve". This burden that Thomas Jefferson had was carried to his grave. I pray and hope that our country in my lifetime can change and I can be apart of change towards equality for all, so I too don't have to carry that burden to my grave, part of that change is never forgetting the sacrifice and people that laid the pathway before me to be where I am in the world I am in today.
"Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress"
