New views on the week's top talkers


Progress on civil rights

President Obama was a toddler when the March on Washington took place 50 years ago, but its lessons weren't lost on him.

Given his remarks before the Lincoln Memorial, it is clear that as a youngster growing up abroad, a law school student at Harvard, a community organizer in Chicago and budding politician from Illinois, he was able to internalize the significance of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

In the 1950s, Southern segregationists tried brutally to dismantle the civil rights movement. That was followed up in the 1960s by none other than FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover mounted a whisper campaign to demean and delegitimize civil rights organizers as communists.

Sadly, there are similar forces at work today trying to destroy the president and make his term illegitimate at best or an asterisk at worst. How else can you explain the never-ending "birther" questions or the drive to defund ObamaCare?

Have King's dreams of economic and social justice been realized? No, but we are making progress. Clearly, the changes he envisioned in 1963 have been personified in President Obama. The question all Americans need to ask themselves today is where do we, as a nation, want to be in 2063?

Denny Freidenrich; Laguna Beach, Calif.

Influence of music

USA TODAY published a great piece on how music carried Martin Luther King's dream. As a music historian, I study and lecture on the influence of music on the social, cultural and political movements of the '60s ("Music propelled this movement").

In 1963, Motown was still in its infancy. By the following year, however, Motown was the primary purveyor of American music.

The music of Motown brought people together — all people, black and white, young and old, rich and poor — more effectively than any other musical genre. We all listened to Motown.

The impact that Motown had on my young life inspired everything I have achieved since I was 11 years old in 1964. It was — and still is — the music that inspired a generation.

Tom Ingrassia; Holden, Mass.

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