martin luther king jr i have a dream speech written

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I Have a Dream Speech by Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King's Address at March on Washington August 28, 1963. Washington, D.C.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." – Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream Quote

I Have a Dream Speech Background

Summary: "I Have a Dream" is a 17-minute�public speech�by�Martin Luther King, Jr.�delivered on August 28, 1963, in which he called for�racial equalityand an end to�discrimination. The speech, from the steps of the�Lincoln Memorial�during the�March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was a defining moment of the�American Civil Rights Movement. Delivered to over 200,000 civil rights supporters,�the speech was ranked the topAmerican�speech of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address.�According to�U.S. Representative�John Lewis, who also spoke that day as the President of the�Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, "Dr. King had the power, the ability, and the capacity to transform those steps on the Lincoln Memorial into a monumental area that will forever be recognized. By speaking the way he did, he educated, he inspired, he informed not just the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations."

Speech Title and Performance : Believe it or not, the "I Have a Dream" speech was originally titled "Normalcy, Never Again." and the first drafts never included the phrase "I have a dream". He had first delivered a speech incorporating some of the same sections in Detroit in June 1963, when he marched on Woodward Avenue with Walter Reuther and the Reverend C. L. Franklin, and had rehearsed other parts.

The popular title "I have a dream," came from the speech's greatly improvised content and delivery. Near the end of the speech, famous African American gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted to Dr. King from the crowd, "Tell them about the dream, Martin." Dr. King stopped delivering his prepared speech and started "preaching", punctuating his points with "I have a dream."

Contemporary Reaction: The speech was lauded in the days after the event, and was widely considered the high point of the March by contemporary observers. James Reston, writing for the�New York Times, noted that the event "was better covered by television and the press than any event here since President Kennedy's inauguration," and opined that "it will be a long time before [Washington] forgets the melodious and melancholy voice of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. crying out his dreams to the multitude."[�An article in the�Boston Globe�by�Mary McGrory�reported that King's speech "caught the mood" and "moved the crowd" of the day "as no other" speaker in the event.�Marquis Childs�of�The Washington Post�wrote that King's speech "rose above mere oratory".�An article in the�Los Angeles Times�commented that the "matchless eloquence" displayed by King, "a supreme orator" of "a type so rare as almost to be forgotten in our age," put to shame the advocates of segregation by inspiring the "conscience of America" with the justice of the civil-rights cause.

I Have a Dream Copyright Information

Deposition of Martin Luther King regarding copyright infringement. Case File Number 63 Civ 2889, Civil Case Files; United States District Court for the Southern District of New York  Download the full deposition (PDF)

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.” – Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream Quote

Read in Full: Text and audio of this speech available at: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm

Copyright Info: This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "I Have a Dream" , which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 .

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“I Have a Dream”

by Martin Luther King, Jr.

THE LITERARY WORK

A speech made in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.; delivered on August 28, 1963.

In his landmark speech, King cites a one-hundred-year history of denial of equal rights to blacks in the United States , and he calls on both blacks and whites to turn the dream of social equality into a reality.

Events in History at the Time of the Speech

The speech in focus, for more information.

Martin Luther King, Jr., (1929-1968) accepted his first position as pastor of a Baptist congregation in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1954, after receiving his doctorate in philosophy from Boston University. A year later he rose to national fame by advocating nonviolent civil disobedience in his organization of a successful boycott of Montgomery’s segregated buses. King, determined to advance black equality in the United States , soon became the de facto leader of the new civil rights era, and proceeded to travel, write books, and deliver speeches for this cause. He delivered his climactic “I Have a Dream” speech before a crowd of more than 200,000 onlookers, 60,000 of whom were white. King’s speech inspired a wide audience, galvanizing many to believe in the dream of racial equality. On this historic occasion, the civil rights movement was transformed from a Southern regional struggle into a national one. Before a live audience and all the major news networks, King declared 1963 the year to open the doors of social and economic opportunity. In retrospect, his speech and the March on Washington during which it was delivered formed a pinnacle in the 1960s quest for civil rights.

King’s emergence as a civil rights leader

On a December afternoon in 1955, Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, boarded a Montgomery City Lines bus. The bus had a special segregated section for blacks behind the white passengers, and Parks took a seat in the first row of the black section. Sitting in the same row was a black man next to her and two black women across the aisle. When more whites boarded the bus, one was left standing. The driver told the blacks in Parks’s row to rise so the white passenger could sit there. While the three other blacks finally obliged him, Parks refused to stand up. This insubordination led to her getting arrested, which roused the black community into action. What began as a one-day boycott of the city’s bus system by its black riders ended up lasting for more than a year.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, and educated in various states, King had moved to Montgomery, Alabama, the previous year to serve as pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. When leaders of the black community organized themselves into the Montgomery Improvement Association, they unanimously elected King president, and he became the spokesman-leader of the boycott movement. Although a popular minister with a large following, King was not yet a nationally known figure. The boycott proved pivotal in this regard; afterward it would become difficult, if not impossible, for him to remain a private man.

The boycott began on December 5, 1955. On February 1, 1956, four black women lobbied a federal court to issue a ban on segregation in public transportation in Montgomery. On June 4, the court ruled in favor of the women, outlawing such segregation there. Although Alabama officials appealed the decision, on November 13 the United States Supreme Court upheld the district court’s ruling. The Supreme Court’s written order to desegregate the city’s buses arrived on December 20, and the following day the boycott ended. The civil rights movement had won a landmark victory.

Throughout the remainder of the decade, King rose in national stature as he crusaded for civil rights. With the election of President John F. Kennedy in 1960, King increased his efforts to involve the federal government in his proposed political, economic, and social changes. He saw in the young president “a leader unafraid of change” (King in Bennett, p. 119). In an article entitled “Equality Now,” published in Nation in February of 1963, King laid out his proposals. He stated that the new administration had the best chance in one hundred years to extend civil rights to black America. King asked for “recognition by the federal government that it has sufficient power at its disposal to guide [the country] through the changes ahead” (King in Bennett, p. 120). During a White House meeting, King urged President Kennedy to develop a plan for a nationwide realization of civil rights. Although the 1960 Civil Rights Act had increased voting protection for black Americans, to King this step signaled only a beginning.

Eventually King’s efforts, along with those of other activists, paid off. They marched, staged sit-ins, and defied local segregation laws. The activists suffered greatly for their efforts, enduring beatings, jailings, the bombing of black churches, and even some murders. In April 1963, just a few months before the March on Washington, King led a nonviolent demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama. City police used gushing firehoses, electric cattle prods, and fierce police dogs against the protesters, some of whom were schoolchildren. Television stations broadcast the brutal treatment of the nonviolent protesters to a shocked nation, a sight that roused much of the nation’s sympathies for the black civil rights struggle. Following on the heels of this horror, King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was, in essence, a demand for action by Congress.

Finally, in 1964, the United States Congress passed the strongest civil rights act since Reconstruction. It ordered public businesses such as restaurants and hotels to serve all patrons equally, regardless of race or national origin. The act also barred employers from discriminatory practices. A year later it was followed by the 1965 Voting Rights Act , which put an end to poll taxes, literacy tests, and other methods employed to prevent blacks from voting. These achievements could not have been realized without King’s efforts to elevate the civil rights movement from the local to the national arena.

King’s speechmaking style

Beginning with the Montgomery boycott, King’s speeches were an instrumental part of his civil rights efforts. Scholars point to the various tools of language King used, perhaps the most basic of which is metaphor. In his “I Have a Dream” speech, for example, King compares the March on Washington to cashing a check, suggesting that civil rights are owed to the black citizens of America and it is time to pay up. A second tool used by King is repetition, including the repetition of the same sound within a line and of the same phrase across a series of lines. The speech in question ends with two such series, the “I have a dream” sequence and a “let freedom ring” sequence, whose rhythms stem largely from repetition. Also King typically used language that is both religious and patriotic, thereby elevating his cause into a holy as well as a national crusade. Finally, he used inclusive grammar, like the pronoun we, to enlist white as well as black listeners in his struggle and convince them that “his dream was their dream too” (Lischer, p. 10).

The March on Washington

The civil rights movement gained much of its national following from the historic March on Washington of August 1963. Contrary to popular perception, King did not initiate the plans for this rally. On July 2, 1963, six civil rights leaders of varied backgrounds met at New York ’s Roosevelt Hotel. They were Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Philip A. Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters , James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality , Whitney Young of the Urban League, John Lewis of the Southern Christian

Leadership Conference (SCLC), and King, also representing the SCLC. Randolph opened the meeting, stating that he had held the dream of a march on the nation’s capitol for over twenty years. After some discussion, the team decided that Randolph should head the effort, aided by another civil rights activist, Bayard Rustin . They set the date, August 28, 1963. With sixty days to pull the march together, the six men then set out to organize this massive effort.

Preparations began across the nation. In Harlem, a predominantly black section of New York City, Rustin distributed his Organizing Manual No. 1 to two thousand interested leaders. These, in turn, amassed their own followers. King and Wilkins, the two most prominent public figures of the group, appeared jointly on television ads. Despite some interpersonal tensions between them, the men collaborated successfully on the national undertaking. While those planning to participate in the march showed optimism, the city hosting the event clearly felt apprehensive. Authorities in Washington, D.C., took precautions to safeguard the capital against possible rioting—local liquor stores, for example, stopped all alcohol sales. President John F. Kennedy and his military chiefs of staff stood ready for violence with 4,000 troops located in the suburbs and another 15,000 paratroopers on alert in North Carolina . Local hospitals canceled all nonemergency surgeries for the day in case their services were needed, while city courthouses prepared for an evening of all-night criminal hearings.

Meanwhile, Rustin was determined to avert all unrest. He led a staff of two hundred volunteers to the Mall, a famous area of Washington containing national monuments, setting up several hundred portable toilets, twenty-one temporary drinking fountains, and twenty-four first aid stations. In New York’s Riverside Church, another group of volunteers prepared eighty thousand sack lunches for those traveling overnight to make the march. Rustin not only handled the logistics of meeting the visitors’ needs but also organized the speakers. He allowed each orator only seven minutes on the podium, believing that a timely evacuation of the crowd would diminish the chances for violence.

The speakers at the event realized that it was an opportunity for the struggle for civil rights to reach further than the black community. With this in mind, they sought to write speeches that outlined common grievances rather than pointing at particular enemies. John Lewis , an accomplished orator and friend of King’s, helped each of the speakers to add a few lines that outlined common black ideologies. Other aides assisted with the inclusion of language that would sharpen the political points of each address.

King did not begin to write his own speech until the day before the event. In a Washington, D.C., hotel room, he penned his opening line. He completed his address by morning, but the speech he delivered departed from his prepared manuscript midway. He delivered the rest of the speech impromptu, coming up with the inspired second half on the spot. As the last speaker of the day, King took the podium after the attentiveness of listeners had waned. Nonetheless the crowd fell silent as he began.

In his distinctive baritone, King had begun to speak verbatim from his script. Toward the end of his speech, however, he felt himself caught in the momentum of the crowd. Unable to hold fast to his prepared text, King began to preach as his vocation had taught him. Behind him, on the speech platform, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson urged the speaker, “Tell ’em about the dream, Martin” (Jackson in Branch, p. 882). Although King could not later recall whether or not he had heard the woman, at this point he began introducing his ideas with the words, “I have a dream.”

With a steady, solemn cadence, somewhat restrained in keeping with the serious tone of the occasion, King continued. He listed his variations on the American dream—such as that some day even the state of Mississippi would be transformed into an oasis of freedom—and that other such visions would come to pass. Only when King reached his final words, “Let freedom ring” (King in Branch, p. 882), did he allow himself to smile.

King and the Black Baptist Church

There was a precedent for King’s impromptu, almost sermon-like performance at the March on Washington. King’s father, like his maternal grandfather, served as pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. From an early age, King had been exposed to preaching. After his own college training, King joined his father for a time in serving the parish of the family church. From his first day at work, King stressed community involvement to his followers, urging all members to register as voters and to join the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). A natural leader, King also understood the important role the church played in any black community.

Historically, blacks and whites did not always worship in separate houses. A winter morning in 1787, however, helped change this fact. Two black men received reprimands for praying in the whites-only section of the St. George Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. As a result of this incident, the men organized the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church . Their success in the North sparked a chain reaction of black churches being established across the United States. Blacks would gradually stop worshipping with whites except in places where the black community was not large enough to support its own congregation.

Although Methodists initiated this revolution, the Baptists in the South quickly joined the movement. The church became not only a house of God, but a cornerstone of the black community. Church buildings acted as schoolhouses where black children barred from whites-only public schools received an education. During the peak years of American slavery, between 1800 and 1865, the churches also served as stations for the underground railroad, a network of safe havens that helped runaway slaves. When the practice of slavery ended, in the confusion of the post- Civil War era, the emancipated blacks turned again to the stable symbol of hope that they had relied on in the past—the church. In turn, its leaders provided guidance to their flock in more ways than just spiritual—acting as a community center, providing welfare to the sick and poor, and job training for the able-bodied.

Between the years of 1936 and 1962, the population of the Baptist denomination increased from about 3.8 million to over 7.6 million. The role of the church grew during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Inspired by the Montgomery bus boycott and the role that church leaders had played in organizing the effort, King and one hundred Southern ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As president of the organization, King led the SCLC in a nonviolent campaign to end racial discrimination in the United States.

Delivering his speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial , King opened with a reference to his surroundings. Recalling Abraham Lincoln ’s Gettysburg Address (also covered in Literature and Its Times ), King began, “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation . This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves” (King, “I Have a Dream,” p. 110). The speech went on to highlight the fact that in spite of the end of slavery, black Americans still did not live as a free people. Although one hundred years have passed between the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and the March on Washington, a black man “still finds himself an exile in his own land” (“I Have a Dream,” p. 110).

“In a sense we have come to our nation’s Capital to cash a check,” King stated (“I Have a Dream,” p. 110). Referring to the Declaration of Independence , (also covered in Literature and Its Times ), he noted that the founding fathers promised each American citizen “the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (“I Have a Dream,” p. 111). He insisted that America has defaulted on its promissory note to its black citizens with regard to these pursuits. At this point in the address, King told his audience, “Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood” (“I Have a Dream,” p. 111). He urged them not to rest until such equality has been attained. In keeping with his nonviolent philosophy, however, King asked that the quest for freedom not lead to bitterness and hatred toward the oppressors. He told his audience to maintain dignity, to fight physical force with the force of the soul. Along with this seemingly passive resistance , however, King urged his listeners to not be satisfied “until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream” (“I Have a Dream,” p. 112). Building to a crescendo, the civil rights leader exhorted the members of the audience to return to their homes knowing that the situation of blacks in America could be changed.

At this point in his address, King abandoned his written text and began what is perhaps the most widely recognized portion of his speech. “On a surge of emotion, more inspired than he had ever been in his life, [he] spoke from his heart” (Oates, p. 260). “I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream” (“I Have a Dream,” p. 112). For the remainder of his speech, King repeated the phrase “I have a dream,” instilling in his listeners the same hope for freedom. His dream stemmed from the American dream, the simple belief that all are created equal. This equality, according to King, should translate into a nation where children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” (“I Have a Dream,” p. 112). King remarked that in order for America to become a truly great nation, true freedom must ring throughout its land. Echoing the patriotic lyrics of the song “America” (sometimes called “My Country Tis of Thee”) he asked that freedom be allowed to ring from every mountainside. He cited various mountain ranges across the United States from whence the bells of freedom must ring. Concluding his address, King envisioned a nation of multicultural citizens holding hands singing, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last” (“I Have a Dream,” p. 113).

Two speeches in one

King originally shied away from the profession that his father had chosen as a Baptist pastor. An avid scholar, the son had hoped to enter into academia in his professional pursuits. King sought a different vocation than one infused with the vivacious hand-clapping and vocal “amens” of the African American church. While studying for his undergraduate degree at Morehouse College, however, he met two professors who changed his mind. Both Dr. George D. Kelsey and Dr. Benjamin E. Mays were seminary-trained ministers. In their classrooms, they proved to King that religion and academia could mix. With their intelligent, socially relevant sermons, the two men inspired King to follow their examples and become a “real minister” (King in Bennett, p. 27).

Although King successfully mixed the two worlds of spirituality and the intellect, this dichotomy manifested itself in many of his oral addresses. Nowhere was the duality more obvious than in his “l Have a Dream” speech. As previously mentioned, King had prepared a written draft of the speech. The first half of the address reflected the meticulous research that any professional academic would undertake. With its multiple references to historical events, the speech read like a lesson in the struggle for civil rights. Beginning with a reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, King reminded his audience of the historical roots beneath black America’s struggle for full equality.

The speech then moved from the Emancipation Proclamation to another historical document, the Declaration of Independence . King declared that it was obvious that America had defaulted on its promise of equality to its citizens of color, that it has given his people a bad check that has come back marked “insufficient funds.” He stated, “Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening” (“I Have a Dream,” p. 111). With this King quelled rumors that the Kennedy administration had tamed the civil rights movement. Even in this minor rebuttal, however, King maintained a slow cadence and an absence of emotion in his voice. He stuck to his rehearsed script.

When he reached the halfway point of his address, however, the minister in King overruled the statesman and the academic in him. As he took leave of his written speech, his allusions changed from the historical to the religious. He spoke of “waters of righteousness” and of “God’s children” (“I Have a Dream,” pp. 112-13), eliciting the very “amens” and applause that he had shunned in his career. King also wove folk references into his spontaneous speech. He played with the lyrics of “America,” repeating the refrain “Let freedom ring” (“I Have a Dream,” p. 113) several times over. In this manner, he connected with his audience not as a formal speaker, but rather as the minister that he had been for several years. Behind him on the podium, Mahalia Jackson cried out loudly, “My Lord! My Lord,” responding to the religious pitch of the address (Jackson in Branch, p. 882). In testament to his success as a preacher, the most memorable portion of King’s speech remains, to this day, the second half. King’s speech would not be limited by the restraint of unemotional intellect. As he had done in his choice of a vocation, in his address, King simply followed that inspiration that “came to [him]” (King in Branch, p. 882).

Most immediately King drew on his own written draft of the speech, which he revised and departed from as described in the contents section above. Here is a segment from the delivered speech, followed by the same segment from a draft:

The Delivered Speech There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “when will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. . . . We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. (“I Have a Dream,” p. 12) The Draft I read a newspaper editorial recently which speculated upon when the leaders of this civil rights movement would become “satisfied” so that America could return to normalcy. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro boy in Albany, Georgia attends an all-Negro school. . . . We can never be satisfied so long as a Negro in the District of Columbia is restricted to a housing ghetto. We can never be satisfied so long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. (King, “Normalcy—Never Again,” p. 3)

The remainder of this draft, the part King did not deliver because he abandoned his text and veered into an impromptu speech, continues in the same vein, speaking about the importance of rejecting the normalcy that has become racism and embracing “a new, creative positive normalcy; a normalcy in which we recognize the brotherhood of man on Monday as clearly as we acknowledge the Fatherhood of God on Sunday” (King, “Normalcy—Never Again,” p. 4). As the momentum builds, the draft reminds listeners about the work left to be done and encourages them that “freedom is in sight,” especially now that the movement has “annexed millions of allies whose skins are untouched with color but whose hearts have been touched with compassion and guilt (King, “Normalcy—Never Again,” p. 4). Although King later refined the writing and then, by this point, diverged from the written text when delivering the speech, his final climax built on this same uplifting tone.

King also drew on his own previous speeches and on historical sources in the speech that he finally delivered. He had, for example, earlier used a series of “I have a dream...” phrases with great impact in a speech in Detroit. Drawing on historical sources, the speech he delivered in Washington echoes the opening of the Gettysburg Address and names both the Emancipation Proclamation and the Declaration of Independence. By recalling these landmarks in American history, King was reminding his audience to bear the burden of social struggle until the national ideals declared so long ago had been met. He was not, however, supporting a violent social coup. In fact, King tells the audience, “We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence,” an admonition he repeats throughout his speech (“I Have a Dream,” p. 111).

KING AND HIS SOURCES

One biographer cautions against focusing too much attention on King’s sources: “I will insist that we do King a disservice to evaluate his originality according to his use of written sources. He practiced the creativity of a preacher and a poet. He had. . . the gift of metaphor, and fretting about sources must not distract us from its appreciation. In King’s vision of the world, ordinary southern towns became theaters of divine revelation. . . . This is what the Kingdom of God will look like , he promised a quarter million people at the Lincoln Memorial: like white people and black people from Georgia sitting at table together and acting like kin’ (Lischer, p. 10)

King’s ideas and oratory were influenced over the years by the arguments and styles of other African Americans . Additional influences include the essayist Henry David Thoreau (1817-62), author of “Civil Disobedience” (also covered in Literature and Its Times ), and the Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948), whose nonviolent philosophy deeply impressed King. In protest of the British rule of India, Gandhi led his people in two campaigns of civil disobedience (1919-22 and 1930) that employed nonviolent measures such as marches and hunger strikes. Introduced to Gandhi’s philosophy at Morehouse in 1950, King immediately purchased half a dozen books on the recently assassinated leader—Gandhi had been killed two years earlier by a Hindu fanatic who objected to the leader’s tolerance of Muslims.

King believed in the impact of a nonviolent movement and encouraged his own followers to fight with such dignity. In 1959 King traveled to India, where he encountered Gandhians of various backgrounds—“Muslims, mystics, rich industrialists, Communist governors, and cynical bureaucrats” (Branch, p. 252). Despite their differences, these men and women all embraced the peaceful philosophies of their former leader. King attempted to infuse their tactic of nonviolent protest into the civil rights struggle in the United States. Tragically, after advocating nonviolence for years, King, like Gandhi, met a violent death after being struck by an assassin’s bullet on April 4, 1968.

Reception of the speech

The crowd roared its approval in shouts and applause after King stepped down from the podium. Overcome with emotion, he heard SCLC colleague Ralph Abernathy express the view that the Holy Spirit had taken hold of King in his delivery of the speech. King himself took satisfaction in the thought that “millions of whites had heard his message for the first time, heard what he’d been trying to say since Montgomery” (Oates, p. 263). President Kennedy voiced his approval too. After hearing him speak, Kennedy said of King, “He’s damn good” (Kennedy in Branch, p. 886).

While many newspapers ran headlines such as “I Have a Dream’ Peroration by Dr. King Sums up a Day the Capital Will Remember” ( New York Times in Branch, p. 886), others made no mention of King’s success. The Washington Post, for example, featured Randolph’s speech and made no mention of King’s. The black press, however, more than atoned for this oversight. Its papers praised King as an unequaled orator. Southern mainstream papers made mention of the speech too. Even Atlanta’s Daily World relaxed its prejudices and ran pictures of King on its front page.

Yet the South remained resistant to the advancement of civil rights for blacks. Before the march, President Kennedy had sent to Congress a civil rights bill that would prohibit segregation in public places. The march had been organized to press for the passage of this bill, but Congress failed to vote in favor of it that year, despite King’s stirring speech. Only after Kennedy was assassinated and President Lyndon Johnson promoted the bill would it finally pass into law as the far-reaching Civil Rights Act of 1964 .

Bennett, Lerone. What Manner of Man. Chicago: Johnson, 1976.

Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “I Have a Dream.” In The Civil Rights Reader. Edited by Leon Friedman. New York: Walker, 1967.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Normalcy—Never Again.” Draft of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Address of August 28, 1963. Library and Archives, Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Atlanta, Georgia.

Lischer, Richard. The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Word that Moved America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Meshack, B. A. Is the Baptist Church Relevant to the Black Community? San Francisco : R & E Research Associates, 1976.

Oates, Stephen B. The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Harper, 1982.

Sobel, Lester A. Civil Rights: 1960-66. New York: Facts on File, 1967.

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Freedom’s Ring

King’s “i have a dream” speech.

Freedom’s Ring is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, animated. Here you can compare the written and spoken speech, explore multimedia images, listen to movement activists, and uncover historical context. Fifty years ago, as the culminating address of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, King demanded the riches of freedom and the security of justice. Today, his language of love, nonviolent direct action, and redemptive suffering resonates globally in the millions who stand up for freedom together and elevate democracy to its ideals. How do the echoes of King’s Dream live within you?

Credits & Acknowledgements

Director, Art and Content: Evan Bissell Design and Programming: Erik Loyer Content, Curriculum Design and Project Coordinator: Andrea McEvoy Spero Project Advisor: Clayborne Carson Video: Owen Bissell Project Administration: Regina Covington

Freedom’s Ring is a project of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University in collaboration with Beacon Press’s King Legacy Series.

We extend our deep appreciation to the many people whose work and lives contributed to Freedom’s Ring. Thank you to the interviewees: Aldo Billingslea, Clayborne Carson, Dorothy Cotton, Miriam Glickman, Kazu Haga, Bruce Hartford, Ericka Huggins, Clarence B. Jones, Kim Nalley, Wazir Peacock, and Marcus Shelby.

Thank you to Tenisha Armstrong. Her dedication and tireless efforts in editing Dr. King’s papers allow us to make this history available to teachers and students.

Thank you to the many photographers whose work has inspired much of this project and allowed these important histories to continue. We have made our best efforts to credit these photographers. They include: Bob Adelman, Eve Arnold, George Ballis, Martha Cooper, Benedict Fernandez, Bob Fitch, Declan Haun, Matt Herron, John Loengard, Danny Lyon, Spider Martin, Charles Moore/Black Star, Herbert Randall, Steve Schapiro, Flip Schulke, Maria Varela, and Tamio Wakayama.

Thank you to David Stein for his invaluable contributions and conversations about this history. Thanks to Lucas Guilkey for his work on the videos, Ming-kuo Hung for editing support, and Naomi Wilson for her comments on content.

Thanks to Beacon Press for editing support.

Thanks to Headlands Center for the Arts for the time and space to finish the project.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Staff:

Clayborne Carson Director

Tenisha Armstrong Associate Director and Editor of the King Papers Project

Regina Covington Administrator

Andrea McEvoy Spero Director of Education

Clarence B. Jones Scholar in Residence

Susan Carson Editorial Consultant

Stacey Zwald Assistant Editor

Dave Beals Research Assistant

Video hosting by Critical Commons Content management by  Scalar , a project of the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture

Works Cited

Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. New York: Dell, 1985. Print.

Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King years, 1954-63. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1988. Print.

Carson, Clayborne, eds. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.. New York: Intellectual Properties Management; Warner Books, 1998. Print.

Freed, Leonard. This Is the Day: The March on Washington. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2013. Print.

Hansen, Drew D.. The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Speech that Inspired a Nation. New York : Ecco. 2003. Print.

Johnson, Charles and Bob Adelman. King: The Photobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York : Viking, 2000. Print.

Jones, Clarence B. and Stuart Connelly. Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print.

Jones, William P.. The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights. New York : W.W. Norton, 2013. Print.

Jones, William P. and Labor and Working-Class History Association. “The Unknown Origins of the March on Washington: Civil Rights Politics and the Black Working Class.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 7.3 (2010). Print.

Kasher, Steven. The Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History, 1954-68. New York: Abbeville, 1996. Print.

Katznelson, Ira. Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. New York: Liveright, 2013. Print.

Kelen, Leslie G., eds. This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement. Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 2011. Print.

LaFayette, Jr., Bernard and David C. Jehnsen. The Nonviolence Briefing Booklet: A 2-Day Orientation to Kingian Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation. 1995. Galena: Institute for Human Rights and Responsibilities. 2007. Print.

Le Blanc, Paul. “Freedom Budget: The Promise of the Civil Rights Movement for Economic Justice.” WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor & Society 16 (2013), 43-58. Print.

Levine, Ellen. Freedom's Children : Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories. New York : Putnam, 1993. Print.

Lewis, John and Michael D’Orso. Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998. Print.

Sundquist, Eric J.. King’s Dream. New Haven : Yale University, 2009. Print.

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Read Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in its entirety

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. addresses the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., where he gave his "I Have a Dream" speech on Aug. 28, 1963, as part of the March on Washington.

Agence France Presse / AFP via Getty Images

Monday marks Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Below is a transcript of his celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on Aug. 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. NPR’s Talk of the Nation aired the speech in 2010 — listen to that broadcast at the audio link above.

Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders gather before a rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963, in Washington.

National Archives / National Archives/Hulton Archive via Getty Images

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.

We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

Civil rights protesters march from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963.

Kurt Severin / Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.

There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.

And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.

We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: for whites only.

We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

People clap and sing along to a freedom song between speeches at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.

Express Newspapers / Express Newspapers via Getty Images

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning: My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Think Out Loud

A Summary and Analysis of Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘I Have a Dream’ is one of the greatest speeches in American history. Delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-68) in Washington D.C. in 1963, the speech is a powerful rallying cry for racial equality and for a fairer and equal world in which African Americans will be as free as white Americans.

If you’ve ever stayed up till the small hours working on a presentation you’re due to give the next day, tearing your hair out as you try to find the right words, you can take solace in the fact that as great an orator as Martin Luther King did the same with one of the most memorable speeches ever delivered.

He reportedly stayed up until 4am the night before he was due to give his ‘I Have a Dream’, writing it out in longhand. You can read the speech in full here .

‘I Have a Dream’: background

The occasion for King’s speech was the march on Washington , which saw some 210,000 African American men, women, and children gather at the Washington Monument in August 1963, before marching to the Lincoln Memorial.

They were marching for several reasons, including jobs (many of them were out of work), but the main reason was freedom: King and many other Civil Rights leaders sought to remove segregation of black and white Americans and to ensure black Americans were treated the same as white Americans.

1963 was the centenary of the Emancipation Proclamation , in which then US President Abraham Lincoln (1809-65) had freed the African slaves in the United States in 1863. But a century on from the abolition of slavery, King points out, black Americans still are not free in many respects.

‘I Have a Dream’: summary

King begins his speech by reminding his audience that it’s a century, or ‘five score years’, since that ‘great American’ Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This ensured the freedom of the African slaves, but Black Americans are still not free, King points out, because of racial segregation and discrimination.

America is a wealthy country, and yet many Black Americans live in poverty. It is as if the Black American is an exile in his own land. King likens the gathering in Washington to cashing a cheque: in other words, claiming money that is due to be paid.

Next, King praises the ‘magnificent words’ of the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence . King compares these documents to a promissory note, because they contain the promise that all men, including Black men, will be guaranteed what the Declaration of Independence calls ‘inalienable rights’: namely, ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’.

King asserts that America in the 1960s has ‘defaulted’ on this promissory note: in other words, it has refused to pay up. King calls it a ‘sacred obligation’, but America as a nation is like someone who has written someone else a cheque that has bounced and the money owed remains to be paid. But it is not because the money isn’t there: America, being a land of opportunity, has enough ‘funds’ to ensure everyone is prosperous enough.

King urges America to rise out of the ‘valley’ of segregation to the ‘sunlit path of racial justice’. He uses the word ‘brotherhood’ to refer to all Americans, since all men and women are God’s children. He also repeatedly emphasises the urgency of the moment. This is not some brief moment of anger but a necessary new start for America. However, King cautions his audience not to give way to bitterness and hatred, but to fight for justice in the right manner, with dignity and discipline.

Physical violence and militancy are to be avoided. King recognises that many white Americans who are also poor and marginalised feel a kinship with the Civil Rights movement, so all Americans should join together in the cause. Police brutality against Black Americans must be eradicated, as must racial discrimination in hotels and restaurants. States which forbid Black Americans from voting must change their laws.

Martin Luther King then comes to the most famous part of his speech, in which he uses the phrase ‘I have a dream’ to begin successive sentences (a rhetorical device known as anaphora ). King outlines the form that his dream, or ambition or wish for a better America, takes.

His dream, he tells his audience, is ‘deeply rooted’ in the American Dream: that notion that anybody, regardless of their background, can become prosperous and successful in the United States. King once again reminds his listeners of the opening words of the Declaration of Independence: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’

In his dream of a better future, King sees the descendants of former Black slaves and the descendants of former slave owners united, sitting and eating together. He has a dream that one day his children will live in a country where they are judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

Even in Mississippi and Alabama, states which are riven by racial injustice and hatred, people of all races will live together in harmony. King then broadens his dream out into ‘our hope’: a collective aspiration and endeavour. King then quotes the patriotic American song ‘ My Country, ’Tis of Thee ’, which describes America as a ‘sweet land of liberty’.

King uses anaphora again, repeating the phrase ‘let freedom ring’ several times in succession to suggest how jubilant America will be on the day that such freedoms are ensured. And when this happens, Americans will be able to join together and be closer to the day when they can sing a traditional African-American hymn : ‘Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.’

‘I Have a Dream’: analysis

Although Martin Luther King’s speech has become known by the repeated four-word phrase ‘I Have a Dream’, which emphasises the personal nature of his vision, his speech is actually about a collective dream for a better and more equal America which is not only shared by many Black Americans but by anyone who identifies with their fight against racial injustice, segregation, and discrimination.

Nevertheless, in working from ‘I have a dream’ to a different four-word phrase, ‘this is our hope’. The shift is natural and yet it is a rhetorical masterstroke, since the vision of a better nation which King has set out as a very personal, sincere dream is thus telescoped into a universal and collective struggle for freedom.

What’s more, in moving from ‘dream’ to a different noun, ‘hope’, King suggests that what might be dismissed as an idealistic ambition is actually something that is both possible and achievable. No sooner has the dream gathered momentum than it becomes a more concrete ‘hope’.

In his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, King was doing more than alluding to Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation one hundred years earlier. The opening words to his speech, ‘Five score years ago’, allude to a specific speech Lincoln himself had made a century before: the Gettysburg Address .

In that speech, delivered at the Soldiers’ National Cemetery (now known as Gettysburg National Cemetery) in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in November 1863, Lincoln had urged his listeners to continue in the fight for freedom, envisioning the day when all Americans – including Black slaves – would be free. His speech famously begins with the words: ‘Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’

‘Four score and seven years’ is eighty-seven years, which takes us back from 1863 to 1776, the year of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. So, Martin Luther King’s allusion to the words of Lincoln’s historic speech do two things: they call back to Lincoln’s speech but also, by extension, to the founding of the United States almost two centuries before. Although Lincoln and the American Civil War represented progress in the cause to make all Americans free regardless of their ethnicity, King makes it clear in ‘I Have a Dream’ that there is still some way to go.

In the last analysis, King’s speech is a rhetorically clever and emotionally powerful call to use non-violent protest to oppose racial injustice, segregation, and discrimination, but also to ensure that all Americans are lifted out of poverty and degradation.

But most of all, King emphasises the collective endeavour that is necessary to bring about the world he wants his children to live in: the togetherness, the linking of hands, which is essential to make the dream a reality.

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HISTORIC ARTICLE

Aug 28, 1963 ce: martin luther king jr. gives "i have a dream" speech.

On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington, a large gathering of civil rights protesters in Washington, D.C., United States.

Social Studies, Civics, U.S. History

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On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., took the podium at the March on Washington  and addressed the gathered crowd, which numbered 200,000 people or more. His speech became famous for its recurring phrase “I have a dream.” He imagined a future in which “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners" could "sit down together at the table of brotherhood,” a future in which his four children are judged not "by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." King's moving speech became a central part of his legacy. King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, in 1929. Like his father and grandfather, King studied theology and became a Baptist  pastor . In 1957, he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference ( SCLC ), which became a leading civil rights organization. Under King's leadership, the SCLC promoted nonviolent resistance to segregation, often in the form of marches and boycotts. In his campaign for racial equality, King gave hundreds of speeches, and was arrested more than 20 times. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his "nonviolent struggle for civil rights ." On April 4, 1968, King was shot and killed while standing on a balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.

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Related Resources

“I Have a Dream”: Annotated

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic speech, annotated with relevant scholarship on the literary, political, and religious roots of his words.

For this month’s Annotations, we’ve taken Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, and provided scholarly analysis of its groundings and inspirations—the speech’s religious, political, historical and cultural underpinnings are wide-ranging and have been read as jeremiad, call to action, and literature. While the speech itself has been used (and sometimes misused) to call for a “color-blind” country, its power is only increased by knowing its rhetorical and intellectual antecedents.      

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation . This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now . This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred .

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream .

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted , every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood . With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

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This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

For dynamic annotations of this speech and other iconic works, see The Understanding Series from JSTOR Labs .

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He helped write MLK's 'I Have a Dream' speech. Now he reflects on change in the U.S.

Scott Detrow

Gabriel J. Sánchez

Martin Luther King Jr. waves to the crowd during the "March on Washington" in 1963. AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Martin Luther King Jr. waves to the crowd during the "March on Washington" in 1963.

Monday marks 60 years since Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

To reflect on what that message means today, All Things Considered's Scott Detrow spoke with one of the men who helped King write it: Clarence B. Jones.

Jones was King's personal attorney, adviser and speechwriter. He was 32 years old in 1963 when he helped King draft the iconic speech, and now, at 92, has recently published a memoir called Last Of The Lions .

Jones discusses his life's work, what he remembers about that pivotal day in American history, and racial relations in the United States today.

Clarence B. Jones in 2021. Kimberly White/Getty Images hide caption

Clarence B. Jones in 2021.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Scott Detrow: Can you tell us what the process was like leading up to that day: What you and Dr. King talked about when you talked about what he wanted to say in the Mall; that process, the two of you working on the speech in the Willard Hotel and thinking through what he wanted to...

Clarence Jones: No, it wasn't like that.

Detrow: No? What was it like?

Jones: What it was like is that Dr. King and his wife, Coretta, had a suite at the Willard Hotel. He was exasperated. I knew from working with him that his ... challenge was always how to begin a speech. Just how do you start it, how to begin it. So I had sat down the night before, like the day before, and I had wrote out on yellow sheets of paper a text of how he might open a speech. It was given to him as a reference, not for him to use, but [more like] "This is the text of something you might want to consider as you're considering your speech." Now, I'm listening to the speech, and lo and behold, I'm listening to it and the first thing I say when I hear it, I say to myself, "Oh my God. He must have really been tired." And I say, "Oh my God, he's using what I had written."

Read Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech in its entirety

Detrow: Did you, and did he, and everyone you were with, know in that moment, this is something that stood out? Of all the speeches, of all the things Dr. King has done, this stands out, this is going to leave a mark, this is going to be memorable? Did you know that in the moment?

Jones: I did. I actually did. The reason I did was that I was standing behind him. And I had seen Dr. King speak a lot of times. And I've seen other preachers speak a lot of times. Now, when you see, particularly a Black preacher out of the Baptist church ... start take his foot and start going behind his left ankle and moving his right foot from his left ankle up to the bottom of his left knee — when you see a Black Baptist preacher started rubbing his feet up and down slowly and you see him do that while he's preaching, you translate that the music — that's like watching Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie — that's when you say, "The brother is going to take it away."

When I saw him do that, I leaned over to somebody — quite frankly, I don't know, in all these 60 years, I don't know the gender of the person, I don't know the race of the person — but I said to the person, "These people out there don't know it, but they're about ready to go to church." Because I knew, like the great musician, that Dr. King was going to knock it out of the ballpark.

Thousands march to mark the 60th anniversary of MLK's 'I Have a Dream' speech

Detrow: Here we are 60 years later. Do you feel like, in the grand scheme of things, America has gone forward, has gone backwards? What do you make of the moment we're in right now in 2023 when it comes to racial relations in the United States?

Jones: Oh, I think it's indisputable that we've made extraordinary strides. I'll use 1863 as my benchmark. Slavery, OK? I mean, you'd have to be just not understanding the most elementary facts of history to not know that the transition from the institution of slavery to non-slavery was profound, OK?

So, progress is rarely a straight line, particularly in social movements, you know. The line is zig zag. Sometimes one step forward, two steps backward, two steps forward, one step backward. The arc of the universe is long, to paraphrase Martin, but it bends towards justice. It's a little Pollyannic to think that the progress of the issue of race is going to be one straight line, all right? You measure the progress incrementally.

Detrow: You've returned to the site many times before.

Jones: Yeah.

Detrow: It's now the 60th anniversary. A lot of your contemporaries are no longer with us. Do you feel an extra responsibility? What do you feel when there's fewer of you to gather, but you're still here, you're still experiencing this moment?

Jones: You know how to make me cry, right? You know what I feel?

Detrow: What's that?

Jones: I feel that I am the beneficiary of some of the best medicine in the world. That's the reason — I'm going to be 93 — but I have an obligation. As long as I have any breath in my body, I have an obligation to carry on the work of Fannie Lou Hamer, Harry Belafonte, all of those people, like Fred Shuttlesworth, and the legacy of those four beautiful girls that were murdered on September 15. I mean, what's the sense of being gifted with a certain amount of longevity if I want to sit on my butt and do nothing, OK? I'm not about sitting on my behind when I know the legacy of all that's gone before. I cannot do that. And so I want to leave every breath in my body and I want to say to Martin, Harry, Fannie Lou Hamer: "I carried on for you as best as I could. And I'm going to do that until the day I die."

• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' Speech Full Text and Video

April 4, 2018, marks 50 years since the assassination of American civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. The reverend, who was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee, is remembered for many of his actions, including his famous "I Have A Dream" speech.

King Jr.'s speech, uttered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 during the March on Washington, is one of the greatest orations in American history, according to an analysis by Presentation Magazine . The message it purveyed is that all men are created equal.

The speech is named after a repeated phrase, "I have a dream," but it is known for moving parts as well.

Here is a video and the full text of King Jr.'s speech:

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "For Whites Only". We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

About the writer

 A Los Angeles native, Jessica Kwong grew up speaking Spanish, Cantonese and English, in that order. Her journalism career started at the San Francisco Chronicle and she has also been a staff writer at the San Antonio Express-News , La Opinión , Time Warner Cable Sports, San Francisco Examiner , and the Orange County Register . Kwong earned her bachelor's degree in Comparative Literature in Spanish and English and Mass Communications from the University of California, Berkeley. 

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Martin Luther King I Have A Dream Speech August 28, 1963 ( Full Speech)

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I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice. We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end but a beginning. Those who hoped that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “for whites only.” We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today my friends — so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father’s died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi — from every mountainside. Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring — when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children — black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics — will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” Martin Luther King, Jr. August 28, 1963 Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C., United States of America