Symbolism may have been the reason Barack Obama chose to deliver his big speech on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

King's 1963 speech challenged the nation to be better, and millions of African Americans benefited from the progress that arose from it. However, that doesn't mean all African Americans agree on Obama.

At the time King spoke those words, Ron Kirk's dream wasn't to be the mayor of Dallas. Instead, he dreamed of changing the inequity at the state capital just blocks away from his Austin home.

"And not being able to go inside and use the bathroom and having to drink water from a stinky nasty well," he said of what he hoped would change in 1963.

And Fred Moses, the son of a South Carolina share cropper, said he definitely wasn't thinking about leading the Collin County Republican Party in 1963.

"When my father got ill, the man said, 'Otis you can't work. You have to move off our place,'" Moses said.

Now, Moses owns a successful supply business and Kirk, a partner in a major law firm, is one of Obama's top surrogates.

Their politics may be vastly different, but both agree they are living King's dream, and so is Obama.

"We've made great progress and that's blessed; and Obama is part of that," Moses said.

Unlike most African Americans, Moses is a committed Republican. He is old enough to remember that during the '50s and '60s in the South, it was Democrats who fiercely defended segregation.

"The civil rights law that passed in 1964 was first proposed by Eisenhower in 1957, and the Democrats would not allow it to become law," he said.

But Kirk grew up picketing against segregation with his mother and remembers when Lyndon B. Johnson passed the Civil Rights Bill, which both parties changed. It was a time "when all those White Dixiecrats, like Strom Thurmond and others who fled and abandoned the Democratic party over the issue of integration," he said.

Now, Moses and Kirk have opposing dreams. For Moses, it's to elect John McCain

"He's a seasoned guy and I think that's important in this fight we have," he said. "And you don't bring a rookie to this time in our country."

For Kirk, it's Obama.

"It is a wonderful opportunity for America to have a leader as gifted, as blessed, as inspirational, as thoughtful [and] as competent as Barack Obama," he said.

While split on politics, the both agree on this, their success and Obama's does not mean the dream of King has been fully realized.

"I think we've made a lot of progress; we have and we continue to make progress," Moses said.

"This nation could never be all that it wanted to be if it didn't give the dignity God gave to every one of us to all people - not just African Americans, but all Americans," Kirk said.

And so, the dream continues.

E-mail greaves@wfaa.com