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Martin
Luther King (19291968)
I Have a Dream—speech delivered
on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington
DC on 28 August 1963
Registered copy, final page
Licence granted by IPM, Atlanta, Georgia
as manager of the King Estate.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
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I
Have a Dreamspeech by Martin Luther
King
1963
Martin
Luther King Jr (19291968) was a Baptist
preacher who became a national leader. For a brief
historical moment, around the time he delivered
this speech in August 1963, it seemed as though
he embodied the American Civil Rights movement.
Earlier
in 1963 King had delivered the most decisive civil
rights breakthrough since the American Civil War.
It began with a campaign in Birmingham, Alabamaa
town then so thoroughly segregated that blacks
were forbidden by law from so much as walking
through the white section at the front of a bus
in order to sit in the 'coloured' section at the
back. King began a campaign of civil disobedience
against such laws on 2 April, assisted by 65 volunteers;
by early May, his crusade was attracting 1000
new recruits a day, and making front-page news
around the world. In June President Kennedy drafted
a civil rights bill designed to override Alabama's
segregation laws and all others like them.
King
regarded the march on Washington on 28 Augustthe
largest demonstration in American historyprimarily
as a means of pressuring Congress into passing
Kennedy's bill. Others saw it as an expression
of solidarityor of anger. King was speaking
not only to the crowd before him, but also to
fellow campaigners of differing opinions; to others
around the United States who, although allies,
considered him too mild and conciliatory in his
views; and to his enemies, who considered him
a dangerous radical. Part of King's genius lay
in the way he managed to speak, without subterfuge,
to all these people simultaneously.
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