UNHEARD VOICES
In 1962, a year before Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” sermon, civil rights activist Prathia Hall delivered a prayer in which she repeated the words “I have a dream” as a kind of incantation. Reverend King was present at that service, and Hall’s words were the inspiration for his later sermon—yet I, like many of us, never knew of her influence.
As we honor King’s legacy, let’s also uplift those voices seldom heeded, the voices of women, of people of color, of all those disenfranchised and diminished. I spent the morning learning from an incredible panel on the women of the civil rights movement at the California African American Museum, where I learned this history from Professor Brenda Stevenson, alongside the ever-brilliant Rebecca Walker, Meta Golding, and Jan Perry.
