King’s Dream, The American Dream, and the Declaration of Independence

• In Event: July Fourth to Juneteenth: Black Engagement with America’s First Principles

Abstract

Each generation of Americans must interpret America’s founding for itself, to meet the urgencies of its moment. Martin Luther King Jr., like Lincoln before him, shows us one way to do such an interpretation. Where there is ambiguity in the intentions of America’s founders, or where their actions contradict their words, King, like Lincoln, chooses to attribute liberatory intentions to them and then he claims those intentions as his own. He adopts the symbol “the American Dream” and then populates it with his own plausible definition. It becomes, in his words, a society that respects “the dignity and worth of human personality.” With this phrasing King retroactively—and plausibly—attributes the values of philosophical personalism to the founders. His approach does no violence to the original formulations but it does develop them in important ways. This is the kind of interpretation America needed in King’s day and, perhaps, in ours.

Author

• Micah Harris, Duke University