The 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech and the march on Washington for social justice sheds light on Dr. King's mission, on the progress that has been made since his 1963 speech, and on the long way still to go.

Martin Luther King's message was a radical one, standing up against racist segregation of blacks in the south in schools and public facilities, and against the denial of voting rights in these states. It was also about standing up against ghettoization of African-Americans in northern American cities. In addition to race, the march on Washington – and the speech – was also about poverty and inequality. One pamphlet promoting the march described the themes as taking a stand against "racism and economic deprivation."

In his iconic speech, Dr. King highlighted how African-Americans live on a "lonely island of poverty in a vast ocean of material prosperity," referring to the ghettoization of African-Americans and how they were missing out on the material and economic benefits of the post-WWII period in the United States, a time when more whites joined the growing middle-class in the country.

In light of this, Dr. King called for radical change, denouncing any need for "gradualism" and stating that the time for radical change toward social and economic justice was now.

The aftermath of Dr. King's speech and the march on Washington saw progress made through landmark civil rights legislation passed by President Lyndon Johnson. It is worth noting that this emphasis on civil rights by the Democratic president would alienate many American whites from his party; 1964 was the last election where a Democratic presidential candidate won the white vote.

Taking a longer view, 2008 saw the election of the first black president, Barack Obama, a significant sign of progress in just over four decades.

However, even with all this progress, there is still a long way to go. Civil rights leader and MSNBC host Al Sharpton stated that many of the concerns Dr. King raised in his 1963 speech – police brutality and economic inequality – persist today. He added that those today who have brought up these issues are criticized for promoting divisiveness.

A recent study from Brandeis University showed that, since the 1980s, there has been movement backwards on some fronts, as the wealth-gap between the average black family and the average white family tripled from $85,000 in 1984 to $236,500 in 2009. The average wealth of white families increased over this period, while the average wealth of black families stagnated.

The Economic Policy Institute found that, in 2010, 74.1 per cent of African-American children attended majority non-white schools, compared to the late 1960s when 76.6 per cent of black children in the United States attended majority black schools. Furthermore, especially relevant in light of Dr. King's "island of poverty" remark, the same Economic Policy Institute study found that 45 per cent of poor black children lived in "neighbourhoods of concentrated poverty"compared to 12 per cent of poor white children, based on averages from 2006 to 2010. Thus geographically concentrated poverty based on race is still a stark reality.

The realities of race in America are reflected, for example, in Metropolitan Detroit. A tragic reminder of America's history of segregation is the 8-Mile Wallconstructed in the 1940s to keep blacks out of white suburban neighbourhoods. This wall still stands today, running through many backyards, in many cases now covered with artwork reflecting on African-American history, culture, and struggles.

From the 1950s onwards, whites fled the City of Detroit for the suburban municipalities, and through housing discrimination kept blacks from following. With employers also moving to the suburbs during this period, this left blacks isolated in the city, distanced from employment opportunities, reinforcing and exacerbating cycles of geographically concentrated poverty.

In more recent years there has been an emerging black middle-class that coincidentally is also fleeing Detroit, and the growth of suburbs such as Southfield, which contains over 70 per cent African-Americans. However, on the whole, Detroit's suburban region is still largely white, and the 8-Mile Road – in the area of the 8-Mile Wall – serves as a racial divider even today – with one map, published on the Huffington Post, showing the region south of 8-mile to be largely black and north of the road in the suburbs to be largely white.

Where Metro Detroit contains many predominately white suburban municipalities that are among the wealthiest in the United States, the City of Detroit – which is 82 per cent African-American – struggles to maintain basic services with the lack of a proper tax base. The city also faces high poverty and unemployment rates and, more recently, bankruptcy proceedings.

In all this, it is important to remember the entirety of Dr. King's message, including the fight against ghettoization and the fight for not only social justice, but economic justice as well.