Martin Luther King Speech (28 August 1963)

When Martin Luther King – the pastor who believed in nonviolent protest – addressed the hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Washington, DC on 28 August 1963, no one really knew how significant his role and the words he was yet to speak, sharing his iconic dream, would be in bringing it to life.

King spoke deftly and passionately, invoking the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation and the US Constitution.

Early on, he gave a nod toward Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (“Five score years ago…”), an equally iconic speech that, 100 years previously, set down the then-president’s vision for human equality.

King’s 17-minute speech was a defining moment in black history and the fight for civil rights.

“There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the coloured citizen 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.

. . . We cannot be satisfied as long as the coloured person’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one . . . We cannot be satisfied as long as a coloured person in Mississippi cannot vote and a coloured person in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by storms of persecutions 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 . . .

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 . . .

I have a dream that one day out in 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 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 colour of their skin but by 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; that 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.

So let freedom ring from the 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 every hill and molehill of Mississippi and every mountainside.”

Video