Episode 27: The Beloved Community, Part 2: Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream,” and the Beloved Community

The Beloved Community, Part 2: Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream,” and the Beloved Community


Episode Date: January 29, 2026

"The danger of the 'I Have a Dream' speech is not that it is remembered, but that it is remembered incorrectly. It is misremembered. The danger is nostalgia without commitment, reverence without responsibility. Dr. King's dream was not meant to be admired. It was meant to be enacted." - Dr. Reiland Rabaka

In this concluding episode of our two-part series, Dr. Reiland Rabaka returns to one of the most quoted speeches in American history, but this time with sharper questions and deeper listening. What happens when a radical call for justice gets remembered without its demands? What did Martin Luther King Jr. actually say on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, and what have we chosen to forget?

Dr. Rabaka explores how King's masterful use of language (anaphora, metaphor, allusion, imagery, and symbol) expanded our collective capacity to imagine the Beloved Community. He examines how King used the speech to bring together people across lines of race, class, religion, region, and politics, while never diluting his demands for structural change. Through historical context, cultural analysis, and powerful poetic reflection, this episode reminds us that the Beloved Community was never meant to be an abstraction or a metaphor. It was, and remains, a call to action.

The episode also reflects on the essential role of music, memory, and Black cultural traditions in sustaining movements for change across generations. From spirituals to freedom songs, from gospel to hip hop, music has functioned as protest, prayer, pedagogy, and prophecy. Dr. Rabaka offers an original poem, "We Dreamed of a World," as a contemporary response to King's vision, translating the ideals and imagery of the "I Have a Dream" speech into poetic form for the 21st century.

This episode confronts a challenge that belongs to all of us: Why is it not enough to quote the speech, but necessary to build on Dr. King's conception of the Beloved Community today? Because a dream deferred can become a dream denied unless it is made real.

Key themes explored:

  • The historical context of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
  • King's radical reinterpretation of American democratic ideals
  • The "bad check" metaphor and democracy as a promissory note
  • How rhetoric builds vision: anaphora, metaphor, and the power of repetition
  • Music as a sustaining force in social movements
  • Inclusive community without diluted demands
  • The misuse of King's legacy to silence contemporary protest
  • From dream to reality: what the Beloved Community requires of us now

Haven't heard Part 1?Listen here to explore the origins and practical demands of King's vision for the Beloved Community.

This episode is connected to the newly launched Beloved Community Program, The CAAAS's social outreach, community engagement, and public education arm. The program extends The Center for African and African American Studies' mission beyond the academy and into broader community life, centering shared inquiry, cultural education, and social engagement rooted in justice and collective care.

The Beloved Community Curated Playlist by Dr. Reiland Rabaka

A NOTE FROM DR. RABAKA: This playlist is designed as a sonic companion to our episode on Martin Luther King and the Beloved Community. If King gave us the moral language of love, justice, and democratic belonging, African American music and the wider currents of American and global music, gave that language breath, rhythm, and resonance. Long before the phrase “Beloved Community” entered public discourse, enslaved Africans were already singing it into being through spirituals that imagined freedom beyond bondage, dignity beyond degradation, and togetherness beyond terror. Across generations, music has functioned as protest, prayer, pedagogy, and prophecy. Freedom songs carried movement participants through jails and marches; gospel affirmed the sacred worth of ordinary people; rhythm & blues and rock & roll articulated desire for recognition and inclusion; soul and funk insisted that love must confront power; reggae globalized the call for justice; and contemporary R&B and rap music wrestle with the unfinished work King started during the Civil Rights Movement.

This playlist moves chronologically and emotionally. From sacred collective affirmation to secular demands for change, from communal longing to radical hope. It reflects King’s insistence that justice cannot be reduced to law alone, and that democracy requires moral imagination. These songs do not merely accompany struggle; they help constitute it. They teach us how to listen to one another, how to endure together, and how to imagine a world organized around care rather than cruelty. In the twenty-first century, as the Beloved Community remains unrealized yet urgently necessary, these songs remind us that movements are sustained not only by strategy but by spirit. They carry memory forward and invite new generations into the work of love and the creation of the Beloved Community.
  • We Shall Overcome, Traditional
    The anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, this song embodies the collective faith that justice is possible through shared struggle and disciplined hope.
  • Precious Lord, Take My Hand, Mahalia Jackson
    A spiritual anchor for King himself, this hymn frames the Beloved Community as sustained by divine accompaniment and moral courage in times of exhaustion.
  • People Get Ready, Curtis Mayfield
    A bridge between gospel faith and political mobilization, Mayfield’s song imagines collective readiness as the precondition for liberation.
  • A Change Is Gonna Come, Sam Cooke
    Capturing both suffering and expectation, this song echoes King’s belief that history bends when people refuse despair.
  • Blowin’ in the Wind, Bob Dylan
    A cross-racial anthem of moral questioning, reflecting the Beloved Community’s appeal to shared conscience.
  • This Little Light of Mine, Fannie Lou Hamer
    A declaration of individual dignity within collective struggle, democracy sung from the ground up.
  • What’s Going On? Marvin Gaye
    A moral inquiry into war, poverty, and alienation, extending King’s critique of militarism and injustice.
  • Respect, Aretha Franklin
    Respect becomes democratic demand, recognition as the foundation of community.
  • Mississippi Goddam, Nina Simone
    A sharp reminder that love must confront brutality; the Beloved Community cannot be built on denial.
  • Say It Loud - I’m Black and I’m Proud, James Brown
    Affirmation as political foundation, self-love as prerequisite for collective liberation.
  • Redemption Song, Bob Marley
    A global articulation of freedom, insisting that emancipation begins in the mind and moves outward.
  • Wake Up Everybody, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes
    A call for shared responsibility across professions and communities—the Beloved Community as moral recognition and social obligation.
  • Glory, Common & John Legend
    Linking Selma to the present, this song frames history as living inheritance.
  • Alright, Kendrick Lamar
    A contemporary freedom chant, transforming survival into collective affirmation.
  • Love Train, The O’Jays
    An optimistic yet instructive metaphor for global solidarity and moral movement.
  • Keep Your Head Up, Tupac Shakur
    Compassion for the most vulnerable as the ethical core of community.

Together, these songs do what Martin Luther King asked of us: they remember, they challenge, they gather, and they imagine. They provide some of the soundtrack for creating the Beloved Community, not as a finished destination, but as an ongoing practice of love and liberation.

What did we miss? Email us thecaaas@gmail.com