Some of us are familar with this great poem penned by Langston Hughes and relate greatly to the idea of a deferred dream. Some time back I touched on Martin Luther King’s “Dream” and oddly enough I bumped into this quote he shared not too long after he made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech -

“I tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and I must confess…that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare…just a few weeks after I had talked about it. It was when four beautiful…Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama. I watched that dream turn into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation and saw black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity, and saw the nation doing nothing to grapple with the Negroes’ problem of poverty. I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched my black brothers and sisters in the midst of anger and understandable outrage, in the midst of their hurt, in the midst of their disappointment, turn to misguided riots to try to solve that problem. I saw the dream turn into a nightmare as I watched the war in Vietnam escalating…Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes.”

The quote touches me and I can not help but think of the way in which Langston decided to end his poem, it really is sad when one’s dream does explode before it is realized.