Many people in our area were thinking about Martin Luther King Jr's famous words in 1963, "I have a dream". Including a man from Scranton who was inspired to take part in the civil rights movement after hearing that speech.
Morey Myers is an attorney in Scranton and in the mid-1960's did legal work down south for Martin Luther King Jr. and his team. Myers was inspired by the March on Washington and those words, "I have a dream".
It was those words, and the movement, that inspired Myers to join King. He started doing legal work for Martin Luther King Jr's civil rights movement in 1964.
Myers saw King speak many times, not in front of as many people as August 28th 1963, but always with the same enthusiasm.
"His speech-making had a cadence and a content to it that was extraordinarily appealing. He was quite inspiring to listen to," Myers said in his Scranton office.
While Myers thought back to where he was 50 years ago, members of a younger generation watched the March on Washington through the conveniences of modern technology.
Equipped with a laptop computer, students from the University of Scranton's Office of Multicultural Affairs asked their classmates what "I have a dream" means to them as they walked by at the DeNaples Center on campus.
The students said they want to make sure the point of the speech isn't lost half a century later. That's one of the reasons Professor Sr. Mary Ann Foley teaches the "I have a dream" speech to her students each semester.
"For the most part, they haven`t thought as deeply as I would hope about what the dream really would require because we're not there yet, we have more work to do," Sr. Foley said.
Is King's dream realized 50 years later?
Morey Myers said Martin Luther King Jr. would be proud of the progress made so far.
"But, the struggle goes on in terms of cultural, and social, and economic equality, and that hasn't yet been accomplished," he said.