On August 28, 1963, approximately 250,000 people gathered outside of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. At this historic march, civil rights activist and Baptist minister Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of the most famous speeches in American history—his “I Have a Dream Speech.”
Explanation
On August 28, 1963, approximately 250,000 people gathered outside of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. At this historic march, civil rights activist and Baptist minister Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of the most famous speeches in American history—his “I Have a Dream Speech.” Like key reformers from America’s Founding up through today, Dr. King rooted his vision for a “more perfect Union” in the text and principles of the Declaration of Independence. In this powerful speech, Dr. King expressed his dream of an America that ended racism and finally fulfilled the principles of liberty and equality at the core of the American idea.
Excerpt
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 is 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 is still not free. . . . One hundred years later the life of the Negro is still badly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. . . .
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 that has come back marked “insufficient funds.”
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.
…
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, though, 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, 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 out in the red hills of Georgia 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 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 their character.
I have a dream. . .
I have a dream that one day in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, that 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 exaulted, 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 will 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.
When we alow freedom to ring--when we let it ring from every city 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. Great God a-mighty, We are free at last.”
