Through July 4, The Post, in conjunction with the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, is featuring US citizens explaining what the American dream means to them in 2026 — including Martin Luther King III, the Georgia-born son of the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
My American dream is to eradicate poverty, racism and violence from our great nation.
I am the chairman of the Drum Major Institute. My father and one of his team members created the organization back in the sixties. Today our challenge and mission is to eradicate the triple evils that my father identified as poverty, racism and violence.
Dad was killed April 4th, 1968. [If he] had lived, [America] would be on a totally different trajectory … we’d be more advanced, certainly for the dream that he envisioned, but in a lot of areas.
He would probably have [made] an appeal … advocating more and more for the promotion of non-violence. We are possibly in a situation where we could face a nuclear crisis. There’s so much instability around the world … his message was really kind of simple, you know? And yet, for whatever reason, we haven’t learned non-violence.
To me, we’re just scratching the surface of who we can become. Now, there are individuals who have blown it out of the park and who are doing that, but not a society as a whole.
I think the American dream … really does include everyone being able to achieve the goals and objectives that they set out for in their lives. I would expand that to freedom, justice and equality for all humankind. We have just have not gotten there yet.
We’ve come a ways and we’ve made some progress, but we have a substantial amount of progress for the American dream to be fulfilled in the sense of what my father talked about now for an individual.
Information is power … we need more entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurship can only be so successful without access to capital. Education is the preeminent issue that helps us all. And nobody thinks about this enough, but if you don’t have your health, you have nothing.
The American Dream Video Project showcases real stories that illuminate pathways to opportunity. Featured at the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream (MCAAD), this series is part of the Center’s celebration of America’s 250th anniversary. MCAAD is Washington, DC’s newest cultural institution, offering interactive exhibits and stories about achieving the American Dream. For more information, visit mcaad.org.
