Villa Duchesne and Oak Hill School junior Allison Federer won the 2013 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday Observance Celebration Poetry Contest sponsored by Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. Her winning poem was entitled “The Dream.” Allison receives the high school poetry award on February 5 at the university’s annual MLK Humanitarian and Scholarship Awards Luncheon.
THE DREAM
Black, Indian, Biracial, White,
coming together in a dream of the night.
Has the dream become reality yet,
or are stereotypes still set?
Has the dream become permanent
or will color stay a determinant?
The dream is alive and awake
ready to love and give without take.
We are one nation indivisible;
we are a diverse nation that is miscible.
United we stand
hand in hand
no matter what shade or color of skin
can truly define what lies within.
The start of the struggle is in the beginning
through the Middle Passage horrors to beatings and
killings.
Then Civil War shed blood of brothers
so that Blacks were no longer “the others.”
The racial unfairness still continues
with unmentioned fighting issues.
The fight for freedom, the fight for truth
the fight to eliminate stereotypes in youth.
Martin Luther King’s dream presented the fissures
in our society which must resolve in parity
America’s hope for more freedom and equality
where ALL men stand in sodality.
The America of integrations
not the America of Malcolm X’s segregation.
The dream is alive in man today
even though some people begin to stray,
everyone believes in progress and hope
that together we can climb the slippery slope
of struggle for equality; freedom with no separations
due to gender, class, or race and no partitions.
This is the struggle all humans face.
We have overcome many conflicts
in hopes of racial intermix.
All thanks to a dream
a dream of one man,
to promote justice and equality throughout the land
the dream that Blacks and Whites will stand
strong and steady together in the land of hope, success,
and progress
instead of the land of desolation for the suppressed.
The country that is united and diverse
the land we call “best in the universe.”