Jan. 21—As Henry Beecher Hicks III looked at balloons displaying the words ‘Together, we are the dream,’ he pondered whether that phrase rings true today.

“When my wife Crystal told me what the theme of the celebration was going to be this year, it felt good at first, but then I became just a little confused,” Hicks said during the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Banquet at the Mack Gaston Community Center on Saturday, Jan. 13. “It’s a great idea and it’s what we should be striving for; we need to be Dr. King’s dream and I could not agree more with the sentiment that the theme suggests. But are we really together?”

Hicks, the president and CEO of the National Black MBA Association who recently served as the president and CEO of the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, Tennessee, was the keynote speaker for the banquet after first being a part of the banquet 24 years ago.

Asking himself what King’s dream was, Hicks thought of King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in 1963. Hicks recited from the speech, “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

“Well, there it is right there,” Hicks said. “That should answer my question: ‘All flesh shall see it together.’ But our theme tonight still just wouldn’t leave me alone. Yes, Dr. King said that he wanted Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics to join hands and sing ‘Free at last’ but are we there yet? So, I wonder what is the context in which Dr. King was making this speech. What caused him to talk about the dream anyway?”

‘Equal access to employment’Hicks said what too many people often fail to realize was that the March on Washington was known as the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

“The whole point of the march was to demand equal access to employment for all,” Hicks said. “Dr. King wasn’t just talking about civil rights and social justice … (he) was talking about money and economics. When Dr. King said that he had a dream … he was (also) talking about the right to rise out of poverty, to get a job, to buy a house and to create generational wealth.”

Far too often, King’s fight for economic justice and equality is overlooked, Hicks said, giving a brief overview of King’s actions following the march.

“In 1964, King met with President (Lyndon) Johnson, who sought his support for his War on Poverty initiative,” said Hicks. “In 1967, Dr. King announced his Poor People’s Campaign. In 1968, Dr. King joined sanitation workers in Memphis to protest poor working conditions and low wages. Of course, it was during this trip where he was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.”

Hicks said King’s fight for social justice “was tolerated and resulted in progress that has made us a better nation.”

“But when he began to talk more directly about the redistribution of wealth and about economic injustice, that was a bridge too far and it cost him his life,” he said. “So I wonder, are we together? Since King’s death in 1968, have we become the dream?”

‘How can we be together?’Hicks shared data regarding racial differences for job applications and homeownership.

“A 2017 study in the Harvard Business Review reported that since 1990, white job applicants are 36% more likely to get a call back for a job opportunity than a Black applicant and 24% more likely than a Hispanic applicant,” Hicks said. “In 2019, Black homeownership, a critical key in creating wealth, was about 40% as compared to white home ownership at 73%. In 2019, the 10 wealthiest men in the United States added $347 billion to their net worth, while the poor got poorer, and more people fell below the poverty line. In 2021, the African American unemployment rate was 8.9% versus 4.6% for white Americans. How can we be together?”

Hick said despite this, “there is some good news.”

“Driven by (COVID-19) pandemic hiring patterns, with overall employment at record lows in 2023, we are seeing reports that that gap is narrowing, with Black men making the largest gains,” Hicks said. “So maybe we’re beginning to come together. But are you aware that in 2021, that Black/white family wealth gap was $48,000 to $74,000? In 2024, 60 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, it’s even worse. I’m not sure that we’re together.”

Hicks said although there are bright spots in the data, the path to the middle class for African Americans is more narrow than it has ever been.

“Unfortunately, I have to tell you we are not together and we cannot say that we are the dream,” he said.

‘Continue the work’He said a complete interpretation of King’s dream includes “not only the idea that one day little Black boys and girls will join hands with little white boys and girls, but that those same young adults will have a level playing field when it comes to accessing opportunity and creating stable lives for their families.”

“(King) wanted jobs and freedom,” Hicks said. “Not only equal justice under the law, but equal prosperity under the law, and in this regard, I’m sorry y’all, but we are not together. If you are free from slavery and free from Jim Crow (laws, which were introduced in the South in the late 1800s and sought to enforce racial segregation), but you don’t have the ability to earn a living to support your family, are you really free?”

How can people of all colors, creeds and wealth band together to become the dream?

“I’m not entirely sure; you’ll have to invite me back a third time,” Hicks said, smiling.

“What I can say, though, is that Dr. King talked about coming together as coalitions of conscious to recognize that we all live in the same house,” he said. “And if that is the case, then it is imperative that we continue the work toward realizing the dream.

“If we are to be the dream, I think Dr. King would remind us that Black and white is not the problem, but poverty and inequity is. If we are to become the dream, then we must insist that American ideals and values must be made available to all Americans, because that is the only way that we will ever have the opportunity to say ‘Together, we are the dream.'”