I have a dare

I dare you to listen to Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” without your eyes all tearing up.

For how this speech became what it is, how King developed the theme, check out

Parting the Water America in the King Years, 1954-63 by Taylor Branch

This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for history. This is first of the trilogy.  As you would expect from any movement, there were lot of intrigues, pettiness, jealousy, etc. One can even see King as a regular guy, afraid of the future and what will happen to him and his family. But the moral of the story is how he and others rose above it all and lead the way.

My favorite part is the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. What I found most interesting, and you never hear this angle, is how the license-permit raj added to the problem. More on this later.