Catching Up with Kamala Harris and King’s Dream

Bernice Elizabeth Green
President Biden exiting the November 2024 Presidential elections followed by his nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris to run for President was more than an historic moment in American politics.

It was the recalibration of a dream of The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr as noted famously in the Civil Rights leader’s address delivered at the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963.
Within a week of Harris’ acceptance of the baton, a record-breaking $200 million dollars was raised for her sprint to November, and she was just flexing. Now, the world knows what Biden, Harris, their circle of insiders, 55,000 Black women (out the gate with a pre-start coffer of $1 million raised in a few hours) and Vice President Dr. Harris’s late coach, Shyamala Gopalan knew.

Buoyed by a groundswell of what may add up to nationwide grassroots support, Harris’s “People-Powered” campaign gaining unprecedented momentum. is in it to win it. Not for show, nor to prove something, nor for FIRST woman, African American woman or Asian-American woman hubris. Harris is running for Democracy, with her eye on The Gold. She’s taking names and numbers and calling out anyone who dares to threaten her or get in her way. Particularly Donald Trump.

Momentum for Harris’ campaign has shifted so much that we are reminded of another speech King delivered, in May 1967 with her mother in the audience at UC Berkley. It was a call to action for the nation to favor peace instead of discord, equality instead of iniquity and justice instead of injustice. He had stepped up from the dream of “one day” to the reality of what had to happen now. Her whirlwind first week began with national exposure prompted by the actions of those thousands of women gathering by social media to collect the largest financial salvo for a so-called “underdog” campaign to last Saturday’s touchdown of Air Force Two at the Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport in Westfield, where young members of ROPE (Rites of Passage and Empowerment), a leadership program for Black girls and young women met her on the tarmac.

That meeting was meant to be intentional and have an impact. The young girls gave Harris a bead bracelet they made and are using for a fundraiser for her campaign. Savannah, 11, and her sister Cassidy, 15, wrote the Berkshire Eagle, “were struck by how Harris took time to meet with numerous groups lined up to greet her at the edge of the runway, and she connected with each member of ROPE as she shook hands and accepted their gift.

“She was so genuinely excited to receive the gift and made a connection with everyone,” Savannah told The Berkshire Eagle reporter. “It’s not what I was expecting.”
In King’s 1967 speech, his last “large-scale” public address King spoke of the need for a “revolution” of values and the need for Americans to embrace “creative discontent” to effect change in society. He empowered the dream with action words.

And so, when “Kamala” held her first official rallies within the past couple of days she fiercely threw down in a way perhaps unexpected to the world, but nevertheless welcomed as long overdue. She defused her self-empowered chief distractor with a succession of brushoffs.
She invited Donald Trump to meet her in Atlanta for the debate she reminded her audience he weirdly pulled out of yet previously agreed to take on when he faced Biden.

In one fell swoop, Kamala, brought the house down in Atlanta. But before getting to her Trump brush-off – now historic (and, of course, toplines on her platforms, policies, thoughts on Project 2025), this writer would like to give advance notice to Trump’s Vice President wanna-be. Tread lightly. Read intently.

Senator JD Vance said at a rally in Minnesota four days ago, “the media tells us that Kamala Harris is Martin Luther King Jr. Can you believe it?” He went on to say, she’s “no MLK Jr.” Of course, VP Harris has no time on her to-do list for this weirdness, but, as blood kin through maternal ties to the Rev. Dr. King, I refuse to allow weirdness to go to go to footnote without commentary.
Like Obama, Harris was born during Kings Civil Rights Movement, and their respective mothers used his example and his words to educate their children. They were heirs to his movement’s intention and legacy, members of that “little boys and little girls” club he spoke about in his “I have a Dream Speech” in 1963.

King’s May 15, 1967, anti-war is the address Shylaman Gopolan Harris heard with 7,000 other attendee in person on the UC Berkley campus. It was reported that the mother of two –Maya, by then a four-month old toddler and Kamala Devi, age 4 — met Dr. King that day. It is not clear if she met him at the rally or as a member of the Afro American Student organization that may have been one of the groups who invited him to speak. King applauded students for their involvement in the movement, their protests and their work to make society better.
In his 1963 “I have a Dream”, Dr. Gopalan Harris heard King spoke of the need for equity and equality on racial and economic. He spoke of hope within the framework of dreams for the future. He spoke of his target a dream activated: the white and black boys and girls of his era, and their descendants.

National ills — tragedies, wars, racial strife – were not quelled, a model nation is still beyond reach. But his words fueled the Civil Rights movement. Doors were opened, even if minds remained closed.

King’s words inspired revolutionary sentiments and they were repeated over and over. Barack Hussein Obama was age three when King revealed nationally and publicly his dream. Inspired, Stanley Ann Dunham, “Barry’s” activist mother, a scholar and anthropologist, played recordings of King’s speeches to enrich her son’s education, it is noted in various biographies.
Mrs. Harris took her daughters to Civil Rights marches, protests and speeches. It prepared them to be confident, strong and resilient, Kamala would later note. As children born in the era of King, and immersed in his philosophies, the Harris and Obama youngsters were heirs to King’s Civil Rights Trust and legacy through education.

They were raised to have faith in themselves and believe their were no obstacles they could not figure out how to surmount, or move out of the way, and education was the greatest weapon and tool. Just as King had been raised by his forebears to believe.
Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States.

Kamala became the 49th and current vice president of the United States, and first woman in that position. Prior to that she was the Junior U.S. Senator from California. She served as the 32nd Attorney General of California