On Aug. 28, 1963, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shared his dream with this nation.
Sunday would have been King's 76th birthday, and on Monday - just 20 years after the first Martin Luther King Jr. Day - the Ball State University community kicked off Unity Week by commemorating his life and work. Yet, more than four decades after King's most famous speech, Muncie and Ball State are far from realizing his dream.
King's dream involved the United States truly living up to the claim that all men are created equal - so 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."
But on the plains of east-central Indiana, a small city called Muncie has a black community that's only 11 percent of its total population, as of the 2000 census - and no other minority group composed even 2 percent of the city's people. In fact, the whole of Indiana claimed an 87.5 percent white population at census time.
On the plains of Indiana, there does not seem to be a table of brotherhood.
Likewise, Monday's local celebrations of Martin Luther King Jr. Day were not populated by a diverse collection of whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians and people of other backgrounds. Neither was it populated by throngs of Ball State students, but rather by those who grew up during the Civil Rights movement. It was not an equal or widespread show of support for King and his ideas. It was nearly a single-race celebration of a day many see as intended for and supportive of only one segment of the population - and in Indiana, it's a very small segment.
Even nationally, fewer than one in six white people intended to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, according to an AP-Ipsos poll.
However, participation of non-blacks in equality exercises was important even on that August day in 1963, as King said: "For many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom."
On Ball State's campus today, as well, it will take the cooperation of various racial groups to create any kind of progress.
Luckily, Unity Week is in full swing, so the Ball State community has six more days full of opportunities to build King's "table of brotherhood," take our seats and eat as one population.
"Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice," King said, and his words ring as true today as they did more than 40 years ago.
And still, even four decades later, no single group can make this dream a reality, for on the path to brotherhood, "We cannot walk alone."
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