{"id":71210,"date":"2014-01-22T10:19:02","date_gmt":"2014-01-22T15:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=71210"},"modified":"2024-07-01T17:00:04","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T21:00:04","slug":"bates-morehouse-debate-kings-dream-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2014\/01\/22\/bates-morehouse-debate-kings-dream-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Bates, Morehouse debate King’s ‘Dream’"},"content":{"rendered":"

As debaters from Bates and Morehouse colleges made clear on MLK Day, discussing Martin Luther King\u2019s dream raises more questions than it answers.<\/p>\n

\"Debater<\/a>

Debater Shannon Griffin ’16, left, listens to an objection Monday during the Reverend Benjamin Elijah Mays Debate between Bates and Morehouse colleges in the Olin Arts Center. (Sarah Crosby\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cKing didn\u2019t want to change people, he wanted a better society,\u201d said Morehouse sophomore Rami Blair, who went on to quote King\u2019s own words: \u201cThe law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Representing the opposition, Blair and Morehouse junior Curtis O\u2019Neal argued against the day\u2019s motion: \u201cThis house believes King\u2019s Dream is unattainable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the core of the Jan. 20 debate was not so much whether King\u2019s dream was unattainable, but what the dream was to begin with. The teams sparred over the definition of the dream and what King meant when he wished that his children \u201cnot be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Morehouse debaters pointed out that King was, in Blair\u2019s words, a \u201cpractical optimist,\u201d not the radical idealist many perceive him to be. The dream was to create equality of opportunity under the law \u2014 not a color-blind utopia.<\/p>\n

Bates’ Brooks Quimby Debate Council team supported the motion, arguing that the oppression within U.S. education, economic and criminal justice systems makes true equality impossible.<\/p>\n

\"Benjamin<\/a>

Benjamin Elijah Mays ’20.<\/p><\/div>\n

Represented by Stephanie Wesson \u201914 of Mount Vernon, N.H., and Shannon Griffin \u201916 of Philadelphia, the Bates team maintained that the dream was an idealized vision of a U.S. in which race no longer matters.<\/p>\n

The annual tradition of the Reverend Benjamin Elijah Mays Debate honors the man who is at the center of the historic friendship between Bates and Morehouse.<\/p>\n

Former captain of Bates\u2019 debate team, Mays \u201920 became the president of Atlanta\u2019s historically black Morehouse College in 1940. He was a national figure in the civil rights movement as a theorist and as spiritual adviser and friend to King, who graduated from Morehouse in 1948.<\/p>\n

Jan Hovden, Bates professor of rhetoric and director of debate, explained that the day\u2019s motion was intentionally provocative in order to illustrate the power of “the spoken word above that of violent revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Kenneth Newby, director of Morehouse\u2019s forensics program, emphasized the importance of such cultural and intellectual exchange. \u201cWe consider Bates College a true friend of Morehouse College.\u201d<\/p>\n

The debate was in keeping with themes presented by that morning\u2019s keynote speaker Gary Younge<\/a>. An award-winning journalist and author, Younge argued that King was far more complex and polarizing than history tends to remember.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As debaters from Bates and Morehouse colleges made clear, discussing Martin Luther King\u2019s dream raises more questions than it answers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":71173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[11009],"tags":[1847,2286,5709,6064,10754],"class_list":["post-71210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-college","tag-brooks-quimby-debate-council","tag-civil-rights","tag-martin-luther-king-jr-day","tag-morehouse-college","tag-rhetoric-film-and-screen-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71210"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120247,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71210\/revisions\/120247"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}