Martin Luther King Jr. was an activist and Baptist minister who led the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. He advanced civil rights through nonviolance and civil disobedience. (Civil rights include the right to be free from discrimination based on race, religion, or other personal characteristics. Examples of civil disobedience include an African American refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white person, or sitting at a “whites only” lunch counter.)
King was the driving force behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The bus boycott took place in 1955-1956 and led to the desegregation of public buses in Montgomery, Alabama. The March on Washington, held on August 28, helped bring about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was at the March on Washington where King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech—a defining moment of the civil rights movement.
The most famous part of the speech is a part that was partially improvised:
So 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 have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
In Bryan Caplan’s book Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration, a (fictitious) group of potential immigrants express their dream in the same language:
We too have a dream. That one day, we will not be judged by the nation of our birth, but by the content of our character.
This is the dream of hundreds of millions of potential migrants. This is the dream of open borders.
Questions
- Can we consider all people to be created equal in a world in which hundreds of millions of people are trapped in countries they want to leave (and effectively trapped in poverty) because they had the “wrong” parents, while others lead much more comfortable lives in rich countries because they had the “right” parents?
- Can we dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of US citizens and the sons of (say) Haitian citizens formerly barred from the US will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood?
- Can we describe the world today as sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, because of immigration restrictions?
- Can we dream that we will one day live in a world where people will not be judged by the country of their birth?
20. How many people across the world say they want to permanently migrate?