It was one of those hot, sultry, summer days that steamed East Texans limp and lethargic. I was a new mother that August of 1963 and was sitting in my mother’s living room reading and trying to keep cool.

As I sat there, my mother’s black housekeeper walked into the room and turned on the television. As she sat down to watch, I realized I’d never seen her do that, and I looked up to see what she was watching. There was a black man on the screen and what looked like thousands of people listening quietly as this man spoke passionately of having a dream.

We watched, silently, together, and listened to that man tell us about his dream. When he finished, she turned off the television and walked out of the room, never acknowledging what we had just shared.

I didn’t know my life had changed that blazing, white-hot day in Texas, by the simple, silent act of a courageous black woman. What that moment meant to her I can only guess. It took years for me to understand what happened that day. And when I did, I found that I, too, had a dream — a dream that became a vision, burning within me for all of us. Just as his dream burned within him that day in August when the sun shimmered the ground and hearts blazed with hope.

Elizabeth Nunn

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