August 28, 2008 Obama to echo MLK's dream in Denver Play video

(Greg Wayland, NECN) - A quarter of a million people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial that day. Black and white. And they heard Martin Luther King's rhapsodic evocation of a dream of freedom and equality.

"I have a dream that one day -- even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice. Sweltering with the heat of repression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream."

Boston attorney and former Suffolk county district attorney Ralph Martin watched the speech as a child in Brooklyn, New York.

He says King's dream was a map for an unfinished American journey I think that if Martin Luther King, Junior was alive he'd be very concerned about the rates of incarceration for young black and Latino men particularly. I think he'd be concerned about infant mortality among poorer communities of color.

The next Senator from the State of Illinois, Barack Obama.

Four years ago in Boston, a virtually unknown U.S. senate candidate from Illinois spoke of a dream his African-born father was able to realize. Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place. America.

Reverend kings' s dream reached beyond race. My four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

Nonetheless, earlier this year, Barack Obama was required to

erase his spiritual mentor's bitter reading of American history Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive.

And so in Denver, in the middle of a potentially bitter election season, Barack Obama will be trying to echo that bold, embracing dream of his other spiritual mentor.

"Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and lower hill of Mississippi. From every mountainside."