Fall 2007

Southbound

Mike Randle, Editor

Note: This article was the Southbound piece for the Winter 2001 edition, part of the five years we are focusing on in our four-part series celebrating our 15th anniversary. It remains my favorite Southbound column I have written over the last 15 years. We hope you feel the same. So we are republishing it.

"I Have a Dream" -- Martin, Your Dream is Being Realized in the American South

I listened carefully to Martin Luther King's "I have dream" speech late in the evening of Monday, January 21, 2001. It was the first time I had heard it in its entirety. It looked to be about 15 minutes long and was much less emotional in the beginning than in the end. But the end of his famous speech, made on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, was magical.

King began his speech by saying, "Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation." A few sentences later, King said, "One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."

The speech motivated me to such a great degree that the next morning I immediately wanted to know just how far African Americans had come economically since King's remarkably emotional display. I began my research by trying to find out how black poverty in the U.S. compared to white poverty in 1963, the year of King's speech. I found that the federal government had no data on poverty levels of blacks in 1963. It was as if they didn't exist. It wasn't until 1966 that the feds tracked income and poverty among black Americans. I guess the laws outlined in the 1964 Civil Rights Act included not being discriminated against by the Census Bureau as well.

In 1966, 42 percent of African Americans were at or below the poverty level in this country. In 1968, when King was murdered, the percentage of blacks in poverty dropped to 34 percent. In 1992, when Clinton was elected and almost 30 years after King made his "I have a dream" speech, the percentage of blacks -- those who were barely earning enough to buy "sleeps and eats" -- remained very high at 31.3 percent.

Something very interesting happened with black poverty rates in 1994. For the first time ever, African Americans in the South were faring better than blacks in the Midwest and about the same as those in the Northeast. That year, poverty rates for African Americans in the Midwest were at 35.2 percent, much higher than the 30.1 percent in the South. The Northeast's poverty rate for blacks then was 29.7 percent.

Now let's jump to 2001. The latest figures available (March 2001) show the national average of African Americans at or below the poverty level is 22 percent, almost 10 points below 1992 levels and about half that of 1966. Have black Americans come far enough in this country since the "I have a dream" speech? No. Have they come far? Absolutely, and all people in the nation should be proud of Dr. Martin Luther King. He is a true American hero and his spirit is one of the primary reasons African Americans in this country have made such a dramatic economic turnaround. It should also be noted that the greatest drop in black poverty in the history of this country came during President Clinton's watch.

During King's speech, the only three states mentioned and targeted for equal rights were Georgia, Mississippi and finally, Alabama, my home state. Here's what King said about the aforementioned Southern states: "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 a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. 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."

Today, poverty levels of blacks in the South are less than that found in the Northeast and Midwest. In fact, at 21.4 percent (Midwest: 24.4 percent; Northeast: 22.5 percent; West: 19.6), Southern poverty rates for blacks are below the national average of 22 percent for the first time in history.

In 2001, 11.1 percent of all Americans were at or below the poverty level. In 2001, black poverty is double that figure in this country. Yet, in 1963, when Martin Luther King electrified this nation with "I have a dream," black poverty was more than four times that of the national average and probably (no data exists) six times the South's regional average.

You folks looking to set up shop in the South listen up. If you ever hear of the South continuing to be (we are easy targets on this subject) "the bastion of poverty for blacks in this country," don't believe it. The people reporting that aren't up to current figures. African American-Southerners have educated themselves, picked themselves up in the last four decades and are surpassing their brothers and sisters to the north in personal and household income gains. The facts (U.S. Census Bureau) don't lie.

Martin, I have a dream, too. Since the South's black population has performed so well since your great speech by beating the national poverty level standard in 2001, I dream of the day when I see Southern whites beat it as well. White folks in poverty in the South represent 10.1 percent of their sector. The national average is 9.1 percent.