For Jim Lucas, the 20th anniversary of the March on Washington was a day marked with equal measures of disappointment and inspiration. That afternoon, as he heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech resonate through the loudspeakers, the Louisiana native decided that, never again would he allow the content of Dr. King's character to be portrayed by the hollow acoustics of modern technology.

"They had speakers all afternoon; people of note," he recalls of the commemorative demonstration. "And about 5 o'clock, about the time Dr. King gave the 'I Have a Dream' speech, they played an audio tape of that speech. But it seemed like such a downer. We had all these dynamic speakers all day and I thought, 'Why not find someone to bring those words to life?' So I said to myself I'd never be part of a program and have to listen to audio of that speech again, even if I had to do it myself. So I went home that evening, pulled out an old recording and started learning that speech that night."

Of course, Lucas was far from a drama novice; taking an interest in acting as early as high school, he continued to cultivate his on-stage talents with local community theater troupes even as he moved around the country as an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Add to that a background in community activism - demonstrating for school integration in his hometown of Lake Providence - and shortly after the March on Washington commemoration, Lucas began performing his dramatic interpretations of Dr. King's speeches as he met with community and church groups to advocate for the introduction of a national holiday in Dr. King's honor. With those small excerpts earning an overwhelmingly positive response, Lucas says, he was spurred to expand the speech sound bites into a full educational program. But, even with generous amounts of encouragement and inspiration, the task of portraying such a historic figure was unlike any challenge he had encountered in his long career of acting and activism.

"It scared me to death," he says with a laugh. "We're talking about Dr. King here. I mean, this isn't someone you take lightly. I didn't want to just do something. It took about three years to develop a program, because I wanted to get everything right."

To get everything right, Lucas deeply researched Dr. King's life: reading books, studying videotaping, visiting with "people who walked with him, people who worked with him." Now, give Lucas an inch and he can give you a mile of little-known facts about the civil rights leader - from the sound-system debacle that nearly silenced the "I Have a Dream" speech to Dr. King's habit of writing his weekly sermons early in the week so he could preach without notes every Sunday. With that wealth of knowledge Lucas has created a form of "edu-tainment" that brings to life the works of Dr. King with dramatic performances that are uniquely tailored to each individual audience - from elementary students to President Bill Clinton to the attendees of the 20th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship dinner next week in Johnston. And though he has taken his acclaimed show from Japan to Germany and every American state, Lucas is still anxious about portraying Dr. King even after all these years.

"It's like being on a high wire without a net, to go out there and take on this man as a character," he says candidly. "It's very, very intimidating. And still today, I do not take that job lightly. I'm very nervous every time I get up to do something related to him."

But that high-wire anxiety is trumped by this actor's passion for raising awareness about Dr. King's legacy. When folks are only exposed to 30-second snippets, Lucas explains, they fail to grasp the preacher's true narrative and lyrical genius. With so much emphasis on the most famous speeches, Lucas says, there's little appreciation for how Dr. King could connect with everyone in a room, whether they were a high school dropout or a college professor. And, perhaps most importantly, many don't realize the full scope of Dr. King's influence.

"My goal is to basically show what he did for all of America," Lucas says. "A lot of people think his work was basically for black people, but Dr. King really wanted to free America." - Carolyn Szczepanski CV

See Jim Lucas at the 20th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Fund Banquet on Jan. 14. The event begins at 5:30 p.m. at Pioneer Hi-Bred's George Washington Carver Center and reservations are $35. Contact MLKIowa@hotmail.com or (515) 334.6788.

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