“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And s 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.”

On that riveting afternoon of Aug. 28, 1963, I watched the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver what was to be the most important speech of my lifetime. I watched it on the black-and-white TV in my home in Lexington, Ky. I’m not sure what I was doing home, because I always was busy in those days, either going to class at Transylvania or working at the Herald-Leader.

The crowd was astonishing in both size – it was estimated at more than 200,000 – and mood. The people listened as King’s voice boomed out from a stage in front of the Lincoln Memorial, hanging on every word. And it was peaceful there that day, a far cry from the scenes being piped into our living rooms every night from Selma and Montgomery and other outposts on the civil-rights front.

I had never heard such eloquences, such power.

“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 remember cynicism creeping into mind. Only two years earlier, the African-American stars of the Boston Celtics, Bill Russell and K.C. Jones, had boycotted an exhibition game in the University of Kentucky’s Memorial Coliseum because they had been refused service in the coffee shop of the Phoenix Hotel.

We had an election coming up in Kentucky, and Edward T. “Ned” Breathitt, the Democratic candidate for Governor, was talking about the need for tough new civil-rights laws in Kentucky. He pledged to help Dr. John Oswald, the UK President, in his efforts to integrate the UK football and basketball teams, and, by extension, the Southeastern Conference.

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In Lexington, this sort of thinking was considered radical, even in the newspaper office. There were no African-Americans on the news staffs of either paper. Information about the African-American community was limited to the column, “Colored Notes & Obituaries,” by Helen Berryman.

“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 considered myself a Southerner – still do – and it hurt to hear the truth about the Old South. But only a fool could deny it. On June 12, 1962, a little more than a year before Dr. King’s speech, Medgar Evers, the 37-year-old field secretary of Mississippi’s NAACP, had been murdered in cold blood outside his home in Jackson.

After King’s speech, many Americans, both black and white, felt ashamed of what was happening in the nation and resolved to get involved. Young college students vowed to come to Mississippi and help register African-American voters. The week of King’s speech, the No. 2 song on the pop charts was “Blowin’ In The Wind,” by Peter, Paul, and Mary It was an anthem of the civil-rights movement, a call for change.

But in the dark corners of the South, evil only smirked.

“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.”

When Dr. King made his speech, Barack Obama was in Hawaii, only 24 days past his second birthday. His father was a native of Kenya, his mother a product of Wichita, Kan. They were in the process of divorcing. Obama’s father went back to Kenya and the boy only saw him once more before his death.

He was raised by his mother and grandmother, strong and independent women in the mold of, well, Hillary Clinton. Nobody knows what dreams they had for young Barack, but surely they never could have envisioned him as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

How could they have harbored such thoughts when in many parts of the nation, men and women of color could not sit at the same lunch counters with whites or use the same rest rooms or stay in the same hotels?

“I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”

Sweet home, Alabama.

On June 13, only 10 weeks before Dr. King’s speech, Governor George Wallace stood in the door of Foster Auditorium, the University of Alabama basketball arena that was being used for student registration, and blocked the admission of two African-American students, forcing President John F. Kennedy to send in the National Guard to protect the students.

“Segregation yesterday, segregation today, segregation forever,” shouted Wallace.

Then, on Sept. 15, only 18 days after Dr. King’s speech, a bomb exploded in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four black girls who were attending Sunday School.

Several decades later, my friend David Housel, later to be the athletics director at Auburn, drove me by the church. He stopped the car. As he told the story, tears rolled down his face. So much pain, all those years later.

“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

All these memories came flooding back as I watched the Democratic convention nominated Obama for President. It was a victory for Obama, sure, but it was more, much more. It was a victory for all of us, whatever the color of our skin or the nature of our religion or the political philosophy with which we identify.

His nomination came 45 years, almost to the day, after Dr. King’s speech. On the one hand, we can congratulate ourselves on how quickly we’ve progressed. But on the other, we can also criticize ourselves for saying it took way too long. But the thing is, it happened, and it’s as strong an affirmation of our country’s ideals as I can imagine.

This amazing turn of events is only enriched by the fact that a woman, Senator Clinton, gave Obama a run for his money. Indeed, she was the front-runner until Obama capture the public’s imagination and forged past her. It’s unfortunate, in a sense, that they came along at the same time, because their visions and constituencies are so similar.

Imagine: We are actually judging people not by the color of their skin or the stereotype of their gender, but by the content of their character.

The anthems of the ‘60s are alive for me again. The answers, my friend, are blowin’ in the wind. The times, they are a-changin’. The best of the American spirit is alive and well. Let us embrace the future not with despair and misgiving, but with faith and courage.

Yes, I said faith. No party owns the franchise on it. Neither does any religious sect. We should never forget the faith that always has been America’s rock, as much for people with dark skin as white, as much for people named Obama as for people named Smith, as much for the poor as the rich.

The words of Dr. King, speaking in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, still resonate, as meaningful now as they were then, but also in a new context of progress and hope.

“And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
“Free at last! Free at last!
“Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”