"What Happens to a Dream Deferred?"

https://www.npr.org/2017/04/28/525992216/the-rev-cecil-murray-then-and-now-on-the-1992-la-riots
(An NPR interview conducted by David Greene with guest Reverend Cecil Murray 25 years after the LA riots of 1992.)

"We are not proud we set those fires," Reverend Cecil Murray states to his congregation, "But we'd like to make a distinction to America this morning. We set some of those fires, but we didn't start any of those fires."

Reverend Cecil Murray, a powerfully voiced man who bore witness to the LA Riots of 1992, uses fire both literally and metaphorically as a way to explain the result of an accumulation of tensions between the LAPD and racially marginalized groups of LA. Although the fires were literally set through the Riots of 1992, they were started and maintained figuratively for years with a lack of confrontation to the discrimination the police department of Los Angeles inflicted upon civilians.

Referencing a Langston Hughes poem, Reverend Murray states:
"What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or does it explode?"
The LA Riots are a clear example of what happens when a dream of equality under the law is deferred-- it does not simply dissipate but rather becomes unleashed with fury manifested through the power to disrupt.

-Linnea Natale