You're not from around here so I'll tell you something you probably don't know. I hear a lot of ya'll in the rest of the country talking about that dream Dr. King had, and I bet you're thinking that here in Memphis, TN, we'll real big on it too. It's different here now, from the way it was back in '68, the way snow's different from rain, mostly.  

My Dad worked for the newspaper when I was little; he was a reporter, my dad met Dr. King on that march they talk about. We were going to this all-white church back then, and one time this black family wanted to join the congregation. The church elder guys decided they had to have a meeting about it—my Dad's like me, he's got no problem letting you know what he thinks. He was a deacon, and when he found out they were going to have that meeting, like they had to think about it, the next thing I remember is being at the church watching my dad go toe-to-toe with some man who was as red-faced as he was.  

We never went to church after that, and the next Sunday my Dad took me to get ice cream; what he said is going to sound stupid now, because he was explaining adult stuff to a little kid.  But he knew I liked jewelry like little girls do, so he gave me this necklace with this big green emerald in it. Not a real one, like something little girls wear when they play dress-up, just something that looked enough like they way cut stones for jewelry that I could see all the little sides. And he told me how those were called facets, and that people had facets too. He held it up to the light and moved it around so I could see that light hit all those facets, and he said that somebody made emeralds look that way, on purpose.

He could have gotten me a ruby instead of an emerald, he said, but either way, unless it had those facets, it wouldn't be shiny or sparkly, it would just be one-sided. Being red or being green didn't make one of them better than the other, you had to look at how sparkly and faceted they were. Someone spent a lot of time making the ones that had more shine and sparkle to them, and the same way I liked more-sparkly rubies or emeralds, people liked other people who had more facets, no matter what color they were.

But he said you didn't want to have too many facets either, just enough to shine good. Maybe way deep down inside, those people at the church had too many facets and were pretty much broken and in pieces, like that man who shot Dr. King was.  Not everybody felt about him like my dad did, especially in Memphis, TN, and Dr. King knew that. What was important, my dad said was, Dr. King still stepped out on that balcony that day and sparkled for those people.  

A while back there was a lawyer around here, black civil rights lawyer, had pieces of the bathtub James Earl Ray stood in when he shot Dr. King. That lawyer put those bathtub pieces up on ebay; he was a friend of Dr. King's and he still tried to sell the pieces of the bathtub James Earl Ray stood in to steady his aim, and that money didn't go to the Civil Rights Museum either.  I'm sure that man still believes in what Dr. King said, and he could've had all kinds of reasons; you can't make any money working for civil rights in Memphis, TN.

Still, if a ruby's green, it's not a ruby—it's an emerald, and it's just wasting time trying to be a ruby. There's a light and life we're made for, we're made all sparkly different; but everybody needs the light, to shine.