Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream: 60 Years Later in Cuba and the United States

"On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. led the Civil Rights Movement in a march on Washington. It culminated in his "I Have a Dream" speech." Like him, I have a dream of a free Cuba without dictatorship, where the rule of law is practiced and human rights are respected." - John Suarez, August  28, 2023 over Twitter. 

Sixty years ago on August 28, 1963 much of the United States was in the midst of a struggle to do away with segregation and civil rights activists were struggling to pass voting rights legislation. The march on Washington D.C. that culminated in Martin Luther King Jr.'s I have a dream speech sought to pressure legislators into voting for the legislation, and they succeeded.

This was a nonviolent revolution that sought justice, and changed the United States of America and 50 years later an African American president sat in the White House evidence that part of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream has been achieved.

Lamentably, on August 26, 2023 a white man with an AR-15 "covered in swastikas killed three Black people Saturday at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, before fatally shooting himself, local law enforcement said, describing the attack as racially motivated."

The three black persons killed this past Saturday by a white supremacist are Anolt "AJ" Laguerre Jr., age 19 Jerrald De'Shaun Gallon, age 29 and Angela Michelle Carr, age 52.

The struggle for a society in which people are judged for the content of their character continues, is still needed for the dream to be fully fulfilled.

More about #Nonviolence365 from @BerniceKing#TheKingCenter #WorkingOnADream #DreamAgainMarchForward pic.twitter.com/SXqRONOsad

— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center (@TheKingCenter) August 26, 2023

Let us compare this with the violent revolution that sought to end a dictatorship ninety miles away from U.S. shores in Cuba that in 1963 was just four years old. Sixty four years later and the Castro dictatorship that replaced the Batista dictatorship is still in power killing and repressing. Despite fraudulent statistics in areas of health care and education the reality of its failure on both fronts was made evident during the pandemic, and the continuing mass exodus of millions of Cubans demonstrates the nightmare that exists in Cuba today. Today there are over a thousand Cubans imprisoned for demanding to be free.

Let us also not forget that many of those who fought alongside Fidel Castro in the 1950s took up arms again against him in the 1960s in an armed struggle that although courageous, failed, and the new dictatorship wiped out all opposition: both violent and nonviolent for years.

A nonviolent movement began to emerge out of the prisons in the mid 1970s and onto the streets in the mid 1980s yet there are voices that claim that nonviolence hasn't worked and counsel either collaboration with the dictatorship or violent resistance.

Sadly, despite the successes of the civil rights movement in the United States by 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. found his nonviolent posture challenged by a black power movement that instead of accelerating change in areas of social and economic justice brought it to a halt. Reverend King warned black activists not to take the way of Castro and Guevara:

“Riots just don’t pay off,” said King. He pronounced them an objective failure beyond morals or faith. “For if we say that power is the ability to effect change, or the ability to achieve purpose,” he said, “then it is not powerful to engage in an act that does not do that–no matter how loud you are, and no matter how much you burn.” Likewise, he exhorted the staff to combat the “romantic illusion” of guerrilla warfare in the style of Che Guevara. No “black” version of the Cuban revolution could succeed without widespread political sympathy, he asserted, and only a handful of the black minority itself favored insurrection. King extolled the discipline of civil disobedience instead, which he defined not as a right but a personal homage to untapped democratic energy. The staff must “bring to bear all of the power of nonviolence on the economic problem,” he urged, even though nothing in the Constitution promised a roof or a meal. “I say all of these things because I want us to know the hardness of the task,” King concluded, breaking off with his most basic plea: “We must not be intimidated by those who are laughing at nonviolence now.”

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., like Gandhi before him, was assassinated on April 4, 1968 meanwhile Raul Castro has survived to the present day hanging on to power as the island of Cuba sinks into misery and despair with Miguel Diaz-Canel his puppet president, and his son Alejandro Castro Espin sharing power with his dad behind the scenes.

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

Meanwhile two other courageous men, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, opposition leader and founder of the Christian Liberation Movement, and Harold Cepero, a youth leader from his movement who had been a seminarian were assassinated on July 22, 2012 for advocating nonviolent change in Cuba. Oswaldo had managed to obtain more than 25,000 signatures in a Stalinist dictatorship demanding a vote to change the system and recognize the rights and dignity of Cubans. Like Martin Luther King Jr. he was killed but his ideas and example live on to inspire others.

The dream survives in others even when the dreamer has been cut down by the forces of repression and hatred. 

This is why on the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington the King Center is saying "dream again, march forward." For as T. S. Eliot observed in 1927 "If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause."

60 years ago yesterday, Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the U.S. from the Lincoln Monument’s steps. Yesterday images of Cuban martyrs and political prisoners were placed on this sacred ground.