U.S. history was made last night when the Democratic Party nominated Barack Obama, an African American, to the nation’s highest elected office. That milestone prompts reflection on how U.S. democracy, like all democracies, evolve.

Jean Rogers, deputy director of the Center for International Private Enterprise, shared her thoughts on the long road to equal opportunity in America in an entry on the CIPE Development Blog today.

Today is the 45th Anniversary of one of the most famous speeches in American history: “I have a dream.” Martin Luther King galvanized an audience of thousands as he spoke these hope-filled words from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the heart of Washington DC. The dream speech came 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Lincoln that freed slaves in the United States. King noted this and the fact that, despite that momentous step, blacks in the US still “languished in the corners of society” and lived on a “lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” They were political and economic outcasts in their own country. But they had found a voice for their grievance.

The times in which this speech was made were turbulent. American society heaved itself through change, wrenching through paroxysms of protest, pushback, violence, and small victories. Less than 3 months after King’s 1963 speech, an American president who championed change lay dead, and his successor politically strong-armed passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act as a memoriam through a reluctant Congress. It was another momentous step.

On paper, I’m too young to remember the earlier “separate but equal” approach that had been legal before CRA passage. My schools were always integrated. But practice in the deep South where I grew up took more than one law to change. I remember separate waiting rooms at the doctor’s offices and separate swimming pools in the summer. My high school class, 5 years after graduation, was the first in school history to have an integrated reunion.

The past 45 years have brought more change in the U.S., but few would say it’s been easy or become perfected. King grounded his speech in a call for the rule of law to prevail and the Constitutional promise of unalienable rights to be honored, for the nation conceived in liberty to truly provide liberty for all. He also called for economic change, recognizing that equal opportunity meant more than moving up “from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.” With many steps in these areas, both big and small, the U.S. has since become a stronger democracy.

Rule of law. Rights. Liberty. Justice. Opportunity. Stronger democracy. These resonate in many struggles still today, not just in the U.S. and not just on issues of race. I see this everyday in my work. Change is what CIPE is all about: strengthening democracy around the world. Our partners are the modern-day Martin Luther Kings of their own countries, reformers who give voice to the politically and economically dispossessed and who champion change. They often focus on the gulf between laws on paper and the practices of real life, and seek to change economies that permit only small islands of prosperity amidst vast seas of poverty.

I am reminded today in reflecting on the U.S.’s own path, that change does not come easily, that passing laws is essential and momentous but often insufficient, and that we should respect reformers, not be naïve about the difficulty of their calling, and support them as best we can. Because around the world, we all still have dreams.

What are your dreams for democracy? Share them here.