I’m sitting here watching CNN and Food Network, (Iron Chef is on!) and they keep talking about the anniversary of Martin Luther Kings speech. I keep thinking about how as a child in city schools I learned so much about that speech. I was once chosen to sing a wonderful rendition of Amazing Grace along with 4 other students from my elementary school in Ann Arbor. I remember thinking about all of the children around me and how they may not have been here if it hadn’t had been for that speech.

It is an amazing event both the speech and the fact that we now have a presidential nominee that is a black American. I say black because I was once told by a friend of mine that she was not African, she was a black American. She was not born in Africa, therefor she should not be called African. I agree, we need to break down barriers like that and just call all of us Americans.

The I have a dream speech for me has always meant something. As a child I felt I had much more in common with the black community then whites. I lived among them and was treated as one of them. Maybe I was a strange child and when I told one girl that I had to thank Martin Luther King for giving me my best friend. She cried and I smiled. At that time I truly believed that I would not have been the person I was if she had not been around.

So today as I sit here waiting to hear Obama speak I want to show how much respect I have for the people who fought, black and white and in between for rights for minorities and women. The world would be a much different place if you had not stood up and spoken out.

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