For those enslaved Americans who resided in the states in rebellion against the United States, this proclamation was, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech: "a great beacon of light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice." Unfortunately, 150 years later the descendants of those freed today find themselves shackled by high unemployment, family breakdown, high teenage pregnancy rates, extreme poverty, functional illiteracy, high incarceration rates and, as we recently have witnessed in Louisville, violence of unprecedented proportion.