History of I Have A Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr. – 63 Years Ago
Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the speech at the 1963 Washington, D.C., Civil Rights March. Image: Wikipedia
HISTORY OF I HAVE A DREAM SPEECH
Today, 63 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. It continues to echo down the halls of history more than six decades later.
On August 28, 1963, he delivered his speech at the March on Washington, at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Over a quarter of a million supporters gathered at the Mall in Washington, D.C., where King delivered his public speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, looking over the Reflecting Pool.
President John F. Kennedy had proposed new civil rights legislation earlier that year, in June, and this march was to demonstrate support for its passage. The march was remarkable because it was one of the first such demonstrations of that size to receive extensive television coverage.
A century earlier, the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 had declared millions of slaves free, but it applied only to Confederate territory outside Union control, so its promise depended on the Union winning the Civil War that was then underway.
Did Martin Luther King Jr. intend to share his dream at the Civil Rights March? Was he the only scheduled speaker?
The “I Have a Dream” Line Was Not Part of the Prepared Speech
King asserted that “one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.”
View from the Lincoln Memorial toward the Washington Monument, August 28, 1963. Image: Wikipedia
But the famous line “I have a dream” was not part of his prepared speech. Instead, toward the end of the address, it was when the renowned singer Mahalia Jackson — who had sung “How I Got Over” just before his speech — called out
“Tell them about the dream, Martin,”
that he related his dream of freedom and equality in a modern America.
King was not the only speaker that day. Like King, the other movement leaders on the program – including John Lewis and Roy Wilkins – broadly supported the march’s goals, though they didn’t always agree on tactics. The phrase “civil disobedience” was not original to King. Still, he brought it to people’s attention, at least in the U.S., as part of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began on December 5, 1955.
Peaceful Civil Disobedience
He popularized the concept in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” where he had been incarcerated following his arrest for participating in protests in Birmingham, Alabama, in April 1963.
As a Baptist minister, he was guided by his Biblical theology of nonviolence. But he was also influenced by similar practices by Gandhi in India in the early 20th century.
“And 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 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!”
View the speech on YouTube: https://youtu.be/smEqnnklfYs
Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com
