Pick your racial segregation poison. Walking into the 45th Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholarship Breakfast presented by Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Epsilon Upsilon Omega Chapter at the Hyatt Princeton or stepping into Thrive Charter School for a local high school boys basketball s howdown delivered similar images. Both venues presented primarily Black audiences — 550 attended the AKA Sorority affair while 1,000 fans packed the Thrive Charter School gymnasium where the host squad played against Trenton Central High School. The entry and exit of both events conjured imagery from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered on August 28, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. His iconic work offered reverie, tethered an outrageous belief that “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. Of course, U.S. forefathers who penned these words did not extend rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness to Blacks, women, or Indigenous people. Approximately one-third of the declaration signers owned slaves, including Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, and Ben Franklin. So, this incredible contradiction of freedom occurred as hundreds of thousands of slaves lived in physical and psychological bondage. Trenton features modern-day enslavement via poverty, illiteracy, deficient health care, and systems that promote generational welfare. Dr. King envisioned, “I have a dream that my four 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. “I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.” Such dreamy interactions list as improbable when segregation reigns in Trenton where 99-percent of public school students list as Black/African American or Hispanic. We spent decades fighting for equality and integration only to end up by ourselves. Remember those protests when Blacks fought for the right to gain service at “whites only” lunch counters. In February, 1960, four Black North Carolina AT freshmen students — Ezell Blair, Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeill, and David Richmond entered a Woolworth’s in Greensboro, N.C. and requested service in the “whites only” counter area. They received no service but stayed until closing, an act that sparked similar protests at lunch counters throughout the United States. While civil rights activists scored many victories that supported integration, those opposed to forced coexistence simply moved out. They built new schools and lunch counters far away from Blacks and others. So, we end up with scenes such as the AKA Breakfast event or Thrive Charter School — Just us. The “I Have a Dream” speech included these remarks. “This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism,” King said, connecting to his core belief regarding the “fierce urgency of now.” We pimp out Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., talk incessantly for one day about his dreams, determination, and perseverance. We coin catchy phrases like, “It’s a day on, not a day off” then do next to nothing for 364 days to further his cause. Forget urgency, we have reached the fierce emergency of now, a time that demands immediate action or we can watch together the death of dreams voiced by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. L.A. Parker is a Trentonian columnist. Find him on Twitter @LAParker6 or email him at [email protected]. ...read more read less