MLK to Obama: A dream realized?

The participation of minorities in today's electoral process has "been quite remarkable compared to King's time," says David Bositis, a scholar of black politics and voting at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C.

In 1969, there were nine blacks in the 435-member U.S. House of Representatives; today, there are 43, including two nonvoting members representing the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. During the '60s, there were roughly 300 blacks elected to state and local office; today, there are some 10,000, including about 300 black mayors.

During his "Dream" speech, King declared: "We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote."

Before the 1964 "Freedom Summer" registration drive in Mississippi, just 5.8 percent of blacks in that state could cast ballots. Since then, black turnout has risen steadily, and in the 2006 elections, African-Americans voted at higher rates than whites, according to a recent U.S. Census Bureau report, though poverty still adversely affects black turnout.

But American politics has played on — and reflected — racial divisions, too.

Since the 1960s, America's two-party system has effectively been segregated, with blacks located mostly in the Democratic camp. Not a single Democratic presidential hopeful has won a majority of the white vote since 1964, the year Republicans put in place the so-called "Southern Strategy," using race-related wedge issues such as busing and affirmative action to polarize voters.

Video Obama rouses the 2004 DNC July 27, 2004: Then-state Sen. Barack Obama, D-ill., gives the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. MSNBC

In 2006, when Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr. and Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele ran for the Senate, the fact that they were black was mentioned in virtually every story. Race-baiting TV ads aired against Ford, who was narrowly defeated by a white opponent. (Interestingly, Steve Cohen, a white Democrat with extensive civil rights credentials who succeeded Ford in a majority-black Memphis House district, was himself the target of a race-baiting ad by a black opponent in the primary earlier this month, but won in a landslide nonetheless.)

States have passed new photo ID requirements for voter registration — which have been shown to disadvantage poor minorities — and have expanded disenfranchising offenses to include drug-related crimes of which a disproportionate number of minorities are convicted.

AP file The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. acknowledges the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial for his "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington, D.C., Aug. 28, 1963.

Incidents of "caging" — a vote suppression tactic that gets blacks knocked off voter rolls if they fail to answer registered mail sent to homes where they no longer reside — are further evidence that "race is still dynamic in the political process," says Laughlin McDonald, director of the Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union in Atlanta.

There has been a surge in black office-holding at the state and local levels and in the U.S. House of Representatives. But it's also true that we currently have only one elected black governor, Deval Patrick in Massachusetts, and one U.S. senator — Obama, in Illinois.

Why is that?

The Voting Rights Act enables African-Americans to sue for the redrawing of a voting district's boundaries, if they show that an election plan dilutes minority voting strength.

This has helped blacks win specific, local races. But, McDonald says, "If you look around the South, for example, you'll see that most if not practically all of the blacks elected to state house and senate seats have been elected from majority-black districts."

However, "it's really very unusual for a black candidate who runs at the statewide level, in any jurisdiction at large, to get nominated or elected," says Chandler Davidson, a professor emeritus at Rice University. "That racial polarization is still there."

FREE VIDEO King: 'I have a dream' Watch a portion of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. MSNBC

A century after the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery, King looked out over a quarter million troubled Americans who'd gathered before the Lincoln Memorial, and told them:

"One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."

Indeed, in the early '60s, African-Americans' median income was 58 percent that of whites. Just 38 percent of blacks owned their homes, compared to 64 percent of whites. Two-thirds of black children lived in poverty; for whites, the figure was 14.4 percent.

African-American businesses were largely small, oriented to serving blacks, and shut out of the broader market. Black entrepreneurs, shunned by white lenders, relied heavily on the U.S. Small Business Administration for loans.

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