Phila.'s celebration of 'Dream' speech brings tears, memories

At the National Constitution Center, they read the "I Have a Dream" speech and sang the anthem of the civil rights movement. When they were done, their listeners cheered - and wept.

A group of 13 actors and high school students presented a dramatic reading of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famed speech before about 125 people. Each read several lines of the speech, first delivered exactly 50 years earlier. They recited other passages in unison.

"When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir," they said. "This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

After the recitation, the group sang "We Shall Overcome" as they left the stage to a standing ovation from an audience that ranged from senior citizens to parents with small children.

Tears streamed down one man's face.

Gerald Kita, 72, of Wilmington, said he was at the original March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

A retired patent lawyer, Kita said the country had made considerable progress since the day King delivered his memorable words. "It's gone from 'I Have a Dream' in 1963 to 'all things are possible,' " said Kita, who is Japanese American. He said he attended the march while he was a government worker in Washington.

He recalled his emotions and those of the listeners near him on that sweltering August day.

"As Dr. King spoke, his words came over us like wave after wave. With each wave, people were overcome," Kita said. "People were fainting on the ground."

Kita knows something about discrimination: He said that when he was a child during World War II, he and his family were held in a detention camp for Japanese Americans in California.

He also recalled that in 1951, when he was about 10, he was riding with his parents by car to Florida when they stopped in Montgomery, Ala. - four years before the boycott that desegregated the city's buses and vaulted King and Rosa Parks to the forefront of the civil rights struggle.

In a Montgomery park, Kita said, there were water fountains marked "Whites" and "Colored." He remembered drinking from the one marked "Colored."

"A man came up to me and said: 'You're not colored. You drink from the 'Whites only.' I couldn't understand that."

Wednesday's program at the Constitution Center began with a performance by Brooklyn vocalist Alexis P. Suter, accompanied by Benjamin Harrison on keyboards and Vicki Bell on background vocals. Suter, wearing a bright-orange casual suit and a tall top hat over her shoulder-length dreadlocks, belted out standards such as "If I Had a Hammer" and the Beatles' "Let it Be" with gospel fervor. Several times, she wiped away tears as she sang.

Suter, too, has a personal connection to the 1963 event.

"It's very emotional for me, because my father was on that march," she said after the program.

"I was 6 months old at the time. I didn't know anything about it. . . . Today lets me know that we still have a long way to go, but we've come a long way. And it's just great to see people of all colors wanting love to be the main priority over everything."