Franklin D. Roosevelt, speaking in a message to Congress on January 6, 1941, enunciated the doctrine of the four essential human freedoms: The first being freedom of speech and expression; second, the freedom of worship; third, the freedom from hunger and want; and fourth, freedom from fear or insecurity.

Perhaps more than any other people, Black Americans endorsed these principles of human rights. But for Black people, a fifth freedom was essential. Black pioneers and Black martyrs like Martin Luther King, Jr. lived an experience of which Roosevelt was incapable. They knew that as an African person, in European America--a Black person in white America--in order to assert a claim to these four freedoms, we had to demand a fifth: the freedom to demand and expect to enjoy freedom. For unless racial discrimination, economic segregation, political exploitation and social humiliation were abolished, we were still slaves, still eliminated from the America that called itself free. For Black people to enjoy full citizenship in America, this country had to abandon one of its most traditional licenses; it had to turn from one of its most blatant and continuing sins--the historic policy of neglecting the very principles on which it was founded.

Our ancestors knew--and Martin Luther King taught us--that the United States is a strange, hypocritical and schizophrenic nation. It will gladly and quickly spend billions of dollars and sacrifice thousands of lives to illegally enforce its doctrines on foreign soil--where it has no right or jurisdiction--while vigorously refusing to provide the privileges and immunities of freedom for millions of its own people right here at home!

It was into this ferment--this crucible of trials--this Dantean inferno of misdeeds that Martin King, Jr. came, labored and died. And it is fitting that we celebrate the birth of our fallen leader. I make bold to say that Martin Luther King, Jr. was the one genuine prophet developed by the Western World and the United States of America. The fact that he was Black--elevates and illuminates this occasion.

One of the reasons we pay homage to our heroes is to seek for some kernel of strength and wisdom. We ask what marriage of chance, circumstances and events electrified their movements or guided their noble deeds? Martin King, Jr.--like most Black people born before 1964--just 13 years ago--spent his early life being seared and seared by signs. His daily life was greeted or haunted by signs which read: "No Colored Allowed," "White Only," "Colored Service in the Rear," "White Ladies," "Men," "Women," and "Negroes."

While these signs were intended to warp the personalities and feed doses of inferiority complex to Black people, they also served to inspire outrage and resolve. They ignited anger and courage. Each sign and every act were daily reminders that the philosophy of Dred Scott-a Black man has no right that a white man must respect--was as alive in the 1960s (and, yes, in the 1970s) as it was in the 1850s.

Black people could not gain lodging in the hotels of the cities; nor could they quench their thirst at a drinking fountain--even in a public building. These signs bolted the door to the new and well-equipped schools near Martin King's home, and denied him a seat on the yellow bus that carried the white children to those schools. Those signs were calculated to effectively impress upon the mind of every Black person that he and she had been meticulously read out of the Declaration of Independence and reduced to three-fifths of a person (and then only for the voting privileges of white people) by the framers and adopters of the Constitution of the United States. We were told, with pellucid clarity, that the United States held no sense of urgency regarding the status of its black citizens, even while it showed a great moral outrage over the treatment and the conditions of life for millions of white people many thousands of miles away from its shores.

Jim Crow in the South, and his sophisticated cousin, J. Crow, Esquire, in the North, were constantly telling us that we needed less money, less education, less political representation; and they even moved us from communities and neighborhoods and told us that we lived in ghettoes.

Dr. King and many others wanted to believe that if we could tear down the discriminatory signs, obtain some favorable rulings by the courts and push the Congress to pass remedial legislation, the nation would react in accord with those precepts and principles of its boasted religious ethic. It was hoped and by some believed, that the vast majority in this country would opt to develop a nation undergirded by tolerance, forgiveness, non-violence and love.

Thirteen years have passed since the haunting and searching voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. rang out with those memorable words intoning his dream and his hope, "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."

It has been 13 years since President John F. Kennedy told the Congress of the United States:

"The Negro baby born in America today--regardless of the section of the state in which he is born--has about one-half as much chance of completing college--one-third as much chance of becoming a professional man--twice as much chance of becoming unemployed--about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 per year--a life expenctancy that is seven years less--and the prospects of earning only half as much."

We remember all too well how Dr. King led black people in the 1960s. Confronted by the horrid facts of inequality and impoverishment, forced by fear, frustration and loss of faith, we manifested our request for reform by moving into the streets of this nation. As a consequence of these actions, some changes were made. In a sense, much of the 1960s was therapeutic for the country. But what has happened since that time? What has happened to those efforts?

According to one analyst, for Black people the

"[R]apid advances of the 1960s were [of short duration]. When the economic policies which led to the 1968-1970 recession [took] hold, social and economic progress for Black Americans became seriously undermined. Even worse was that sizeable group of Blacks not able to benefit from the economic gains of the 1960s."