SEXUAL ENERGIES: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

August 28, 1963

"Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring—when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics—will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

black actress Nia Long pregnant walking with her husband 4

"... Dr. King had side women in his life, but by the time it became public knowledge it was of no importance to Black Americans because the axiom in African traditional thought places value on relationships above all, and the efforts of white Americans to present the evidence and shame were unsuccessful. The same thing years later perplexed white Americans trying to bring down Washington DC mayor, Marion Barry during his productive four terms, about African-Americans loyalty to their leaders. I studied these things hard as a father, but as a young man the Moroccan landscape, Moroccan women, and Gibran’s words were developing and opening a discipline within me, and creating enormous sexual tension, and powerful music within my being trying to get out of me as expressions of sound and movement..."  ©Gregory E. Woods 

Dorothy Dandridge

"Aug. 28, 1963, Dr. King, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, addressed marchers during his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. My father was there and I was too young to travel so Mommy, my sister Cynthia and I watched it on TV and searched the newspapers the next day for pictures of the event to see if we could see Daddy in the crowd. We found him, or so we thought. All of the parallels of that world and the aftermath of that moment were non-existent to me then. But here in the future I am and my father who later became the Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality in Washington DC is a great-grandfather and aging. Many things have changed since 1963..." ©Gregory E. Woods, excerpt Songs of a Father