Every year around this time, I find myself reflecting on my father's dream for our country—a profound vision for justice, freedom, unity, and peace.

King’s language lives most durably, of course, in his “I Have a Dream” speech, recited so routinely each Martin Luther King Day that it’s become something of a civic liturgy, the words sometimes mouthed without real awareness or reflection.

In Harlem, New York, while signing copies of his first book, “Stride Toward Freedom,” Izola Ware Curry stabbed King with a letter opener between his heart and lung. He was taken to Harlem Hospital where his physician, Dr. Aubré D. Maynard, said, “If you had sneezed, your aorta would have been punctured and you would have drowned in your own blood.”