This past weekend as our nation remembered the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., there were millions of references to his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. I can still remember as a nine year-old boy being riveted to the grainy image on my grandmother’s black and white television. My heart soared with Dr. King’s lofty rhetoric and I knew that I wanted to be a part of that dream!
His famous speech almost never happened. The scripted speech on that hot, muggy August day in 1963 centered on the image of a “bad check.” America had failed on its promise of liberty and justice for all. Black Americans had received a bad check and it was time to demand restitution. After enumerating the different ways that America had failed her minority citizens, the prepared script had Dr. King calling on the crowd to “go back to our communities as members of the international association of creative dissatisfaction.”
Can you imagine school children 50 years later reciting a speech calling for creative dissatisfaction?
The arguably greatest speech of the 20th century was not planned; it was the result Dr. King’s willingness to improvise and his gifted genius as a skilled orator.
The speech that was planned and scripted was not going well. The huge crowd was hot, tired, and impatient. The dedicated reformer’s words were falling flat. Right before he spoke, the great Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson sang and she was standing close to him as he stepped up to the podium. She could tell that something wasn’t right as he struggled with his words and in a moment than can only be explained as divine intervention she cried out, “Tell them about the dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream!”
What happened next was a moment that changed history. Observers said that Dr. King’s body language and his demeanor changed. He ceased to be a lecturer—he pushed his prepared notes aside and he became a powerful preacher. He was no longer speaking from his head, but from his heart. Everything changed with his transformative words, “I have a dream today.”
There is a powerful lesson in leadership in what happened that day in our nation’s capital. We can choose to lead from the divide, or we can lead from the dream. African- Americans didn’t need anyone to tell them that they had received a bad check in 1963. They saw it every day in segregated schools, restaurants, water fountains, buses and neighborhoods. The prepared speech was only reinforcing their dissatisfaction and sending them home with a mission to make their problems known.
This seems to be the default type of leadership we see today. It focuses on what is wrong and delineates a clear separation between people of differing views. It plays on people’s fears and results in reactionary defenses. It fosters an “us against them” mentality. We see the result of this type of leadership playing out at the highest levels.
There is a better way, a much better way. In that split-second decision when Dr. King pushed his notes aside, he radically altered his leadership approach and it resulted in the defining moment of the civil-rights movement. In speaking of the dream and not the divide, he was suddenly appealing to all Americans, not just those who had been disenfranchised. In that Providential second of destiny and fate, it was fitting that he was standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial because Dr. Martin Luther King was now appealing to “the better angels of our nature.”
Leading from the dream lifts people up, it doesn’t put people down. It inspires people rather than inciting them. It is unifying, not divisive. Focusing on the dream is liberating, not oppressive.
People all across this land were inspired and moved by Dr. King’s soaring rhetoric including a nine year-old white boy in Alabama. That was the day that I wanted Dr. King’s dream to become my dream. And while I didn’t realize it at the time, that was the day I learned that the most effective leadership is found when we lead from the dream, not the divide.
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