Well, more correctly, HE had a dream….

In our last task some of you were researching the case ‘Brown v the Board of Education of Topeka’ which represented the beginning of the end for segregated education in the US. Only the beginning of the end, however, or perhaps as Churchill put it in WW2: « Not the beginning of the end but perhaps the end of the beginning ».   Things did not change overnight – a change in the law does not mean a change in traditions, mind-sets, morality, prejudices and systems of operation.  Just a few years after this an ‘obscure’ and very young pastor of a church in the South hit the world stage….

So, some questions for you to address in your groups based upon archive/doc and museums research:-

• Who was this man and what was his background?
• What events led to him being thrust into the limelight at the head of a national movement?
• From his speeches, can we discern what were his principal ‘messages’?
• Does the record of his life and his speeches suggest that he has ‘something to say’ even in this new century that he did not himself live to see?

This will lead us into next week (at the usual time) when ‘our class’ will be in Amphi Hadamard with a special conference address from Ms Sarah Sands upon the subject of the above.