Photo: Mickalene Thomas Remember Me, 2006 c-print 49 1/2 x 59 x 1 3/4 inches (framed) Edition 4 of 5, with 2 APs.

The March on Washington took place on August 28, 1963, marking the twelfth anniversary of the murder of Emmett Till. Till was just 14 years old when he was lynched in Mississippi, an event so heinous that it became a pivotal catalyst for the next phase of the Civil Rights Movement.

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In 1963, less than five years before he would be assassinated the United States government, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the top of Lincoln Memorial and delivered a speech, a speech so powerful that you can hear it in your mind’s ear as you read his words: “I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.”

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But where have we come in decades since this speech? We live in an era where extrajudicial executions are a daily operation at the hands of police departments around the country. Where these brutal murders are brazenly broadcast on television with complete disregard—or perhaps intention—to involve a permanent state of PTSD in our countrymen and women. Where protests are called unpatriotic in as much as some in this country pledge allegiance to a flag that represents the politics of the Confederacy.

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