Normalcy, never again. The speech now commonly referred to as "I Have A Dream" was originally drafted under that three word title. And as so many other juxtapositions revealed themselves along this journey, it's poignant and fitting that the federal commemoration of Martin Luther King's 80th birthday is a prelude for an occasion that makes at least part of that dream manifest reality.

Because I fall into the Gen X category, the data bank of "where were you when?" memories for me are few and far between. I could never pinpoint an exact time when we've stood at the precipice of the kind of seismic shift that this country will undergo tomorrow afternoon at high noon.

But what I am amazed at is the optimism of the trailblazers who came before, opened doors we can easily walk through and oftentimes take for granted now. In an fascinating bit of footage unearthed by BBC World News America from 1964, MLK expressed confidence that the barrier so many of us thought we'd never see fall would happen "within 40 years." Even before Black folk were legally allowed to take part in our own democracy, his conviction that a person of color could eventually ascend to the highest office in the land makes even ironic detachment seem like a sorry kind of wisdom.

Hope springs eternal.

Labels: American history, Barack Obama, celebration, Martin Luther King