A dream deferred, but not denied

Crowds gather for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King, Jr. made his famous "I Have a Dream"speech. Public domain image.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a frequent visitor of Bridgeport, Conn. He spoke at the city's Klein Memorial Auditorium on three occasions in the 1960s, a time when the industrial might of the city was drawing many African Americans to work at factories there.

Yet Bridgeport's original street named after the iconic civil rights leader no longer exists. It had run through Father Panik Village, one of the most dangerous housing projects in the U.S. during the 1980s and 1990s. Drugs, violence, and prostitution were so endemic that officials decided their best recourse was to raze the entire area.

After Father Panik was demolished in 1993, Stratford Avenue, one of the city's main arteries, was graced with the honorific title of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Aside from those who live there, however, few people know it by that name. It's as if King has disappeared from the city's memory.

King would not be any prouder of having his name attached to the new street. Dilapidated storefronts and crumbling Victorian-style houses run along it, as well as the husks of those once-vibrant factories, now barely standing. This area, too, is a hotbed of crime and gang activity. People avoid going there at night.

Most of the city today appears poised on the brink of economic renaissance, but the largely black and immigrant neighborhoods of the East End - through which Stratford Avenue runs - remain mostly neglected by revitalization efforts.

Bridgeport's Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is emblematic of streets by the same name in other cities across the nation. For most of the people who live in the shadow of King, his dream of equality remains just that – a dream.

Were he alive today, King would be appalled at the conditions under which too many blacks still live and the significant barriers that remain.

More than a third of students in the Bridgeport public schools fail to graduate each year. Those who do rarely have the wherewithal to pursue higher education. Families are blighted by absentee parents, malnutrition, and the ever-gnawing call of street life. Without the money or knowledge to make better decisions for themselves, the struggle for many black people to forge a better life is beset by obstacles that few whites ever have to face.

The vestiges of discrimination still exist as well. Police do not usually advocate the targeting of a particular group. But police go where the crime is, and develop through those experiences presumptions about suspicious behaviors and lifestyles. An officer may not have any conscious ill-will toward a given racial or ethnic group, but may be more keenly aware of the activities of one group over another. This is one reason why, though drug use may be equally prevalent among whites, blacks are more liable to be stopped, searched and prosecuted.

Still, 50 years after King made his famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, there has been significant progress. Voting is no longer as daunting; indeed, at least in Connecticut, the legislature recently moved to expand voting opportunities. Black residents can move freely without restrictions. Some have held positions in municipal or state government. Others have found success, leaving the projects for more affluent outlying districts.

King would be proud of the many millions of African Americans who have climbed the ranks of society. He'd recognize that the barrier of overt oppression has largely been supplanted by the inertia of history.

And just as he did when he met with gang leaders in Chicago to talk them out of their violent habits, King would encourage today's blacks to focus their energies on continuing the hard task of improving their communities, including those on the streets that bear his name.