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‘I Have a Dream,’ Yesterday and Today

At the March on Washington, where thousands gathered on Saturday to renew the call for equality, participants reflected on Martin Luther King’s historic speech and its themes in the present.

By Darren Sands

Reporting from Washington

Sixty years after the March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech galvanized supporters of the Civil Rights Movement with an anthemic call to action, several thousand people gathered on the National Mall on Saturday to remind the nation of its unfinished work on equality.

Many who turned out, some having also attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, traveled from across the country to recall a searing moment in American history that propelled, in the words of one speaker, “the struggle of a lifetime.” The event was convened by the Rev. Al Sharpton and by Martin Luther King III, the son of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, and was attended by dignitaries including Andrew Young, the former United Nations ambassador and mayor of Atlanta, and the U.S. Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia.

Hovering above all the proceedings, though, were the words delivered by Dr. King six decades ago in front of the Lincoln Memorial, when he took the measure of society a century after slavery was abolished and lamented how Black Americans were “still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.”

Though the speech gained renown for its rousing, aspirational coda, other segments decried facets of racial inequality that still resonated with Saturday’s participants. Several attendees who were interviewed — some of them commented on specific excerpts, while others expressed thoughts on Dr. King’s words in general — reflected on the echoes, and the nation, from today’s perspective. Their quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

Martin Luther King on law enforcement

“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.”

Jacquealin Yeadon, organizer, National Action Network, Moncks Corner, S.C.

“Police brutality hasn’t gone anywhere — in fact, we deal with it all the time. People dying in jail, in police custody. We’ve got stories upon stories upon stories — of the same thing.”

King on voting rights

“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.”

Talina Massey, community organizer, entrepreneur, New Bern, N.C.

“This is what’s called voter suppression. Especially in the South with these methods of suppression that make it harder for citizens to vote. This is why we’ve got to keep swinging and not giving up until the fight is won.”

King on justice

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.

Grady Smith, retiree, Atlanta

“I came here today because I’ve been a civil rights worker. And we’re here with a lot of civil rights workers and leaders, because we had supported the effort that Martin Luther King put forth years ago about voting rights, equality. We’re still not there. That’s why I’m here.”

King on urgency

“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.”

Nancy Hoover, pediatric nurse practitioner, Damascus, Md.

“I was a freshman in high school in New York when I heard the speech. I wasn’t here, which would have been phenomenal. But now I am. And I feel there’s not been enough progress. It’s like, ‘Come on world, let’s get going. What are we waiting for?’”

King on his dream

“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."

Alfonso R. Bernard Sr., New York City, founder, chief executive and pastor, Christian Cultural Center

“He spoke of a dream, an American dream. And here we are 60 years later. Blacks have experienced unprecedented wealth, education. We have more Blacks in positions of power than we have had at any time in the history of America, have an increasing number of Black millionaires. With all that said, we still have the highest rate of poverty. We still have racial disparities in our justice system, policing systems, educational system, health care system and economic opportunity. We still have a long way to go.”

Why “I Have A Dream” Remains One Of History’s Greatest Speeches

Monday will mark the holiday in honor of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Texas A&M University Professor of Communication Leroy Dorsey is reflecting on King’s celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech, one which he said is a masterful use of rhetorical traditions.

King delivered the famous speech as he stood before a crowd of 250,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963 during the “March on Washington.” The speech was televised live to an audience of millions.

“He was not just speaking to African Americans, but to all Americans” ~ Leroy Dorsey

Dorsey , associate dean for inclusive excellence and strategic initiatives in the College of Liberal Arts, said one of the reasons the speech stands above all of King’s other speeches – and nearly every other speech ever written – is because its themes are timeless. “It addresses issues that American culture has faced from the beginning of its existence and still faces today: discrimination, broken promises, and the need to believe that things will be better,” he said.

Powerful Use of Rhetorical Devices

Dorsey said the speech is also notable for its use of several rhetorical traditions, namely the Jeremiad, metaphor-use and repetition.

The Jeremiad is a form of early American sermon that narratively moved audiences from recognizing the moral standard set in its past to a damning critique of current events to the need to embrace higher virtues.

“King does that with his invocation of several ‘holy’ American documents such as the Emancipation Proclamation and Declaration of Independence as the markers of what America is supposed to be,” Dorsey said. “Then he moves to the broken promises in the form of injustice and violence. And he then moves to a realization that people need to look to one another’s character and not their skin color for true progress to be made.”

Second, King’s use of metaphors explains U.S. history in a way that is easy to understand, Dorsey said.

“Metaphors can be used to connect an unknown or confusing idea to a known idea for the audience to better understand,” he said. For example, referring to founding U.S. documents as “bad checks” transformed what could have been a complex political treatise into the simpler ideas that the government had broken promises to the American people and that this was not consistent with the promise of equal rights.

The third rhetorical device found in the speech, repetition, is used while juxtaposing contrasting ideas, setting up a rhythm and cadence that keeps the audience engaged and thoughtful, Dorsey said.

“I have a dream” is repeated while contrasting “sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners” and “judged by the content of their character” instead of “judged by the color of their skin.” The device was used also with “let freedom ring” which juxtaposes states that were culturally polar opposites – Colorado, California and New York vs. Georgia, Tennessee and Mississippi.

Words That Moved A Movement

The March on Washington and King’s speech are widely considered turning points in the Civil Rights Movement, shifting the demand and demonstrations for racial equality that had mostly occurred in the South to a national stage.

Dorsey said the speech advanced and solidified the movement because “it became the perfect response to a turbulent moment as it tried to address past hurts, current indifference and potential violence, acting as a pivot point between the Kennedy administration’s slow response and the urgent response of the ‘marvelous new militancy’ [those fighting against racism].”

What made King such an outstanding orator were the communication skills he used to stir audience passion, Dorsey said. “When you watch the speech, halfway through he stops reading and becomes a pastor, urging his flock to do the right thing,” he said. “The cadence, power and call to the better nature of his audience reminds you of a religious service.”

Lessons For Today

Dorsey said the best leaders are those who can inspire all without dismissing some, and that King in his famous address did just that.

“He was not just speaking to African Americans in that speech, but to all Americans, because he understood that the country would more easily rise together when it worked together,” he said.

“I Have a Dream” remains relevant today “because for as many strides that have been made, we’re still dealing with the elements of a ‘bad check’ – voter suppression, instances of violence against people of color without real redress, etc.,” Dorsey said. “Remembering what King was trying to do then can provide us insight into what we need to consider now.”

Additionally, King understood that persuasion doesn’t move from A to Z in one fell swoop, but it moves methodically from A to B, B to C, etc., Dorsey said. “In the line ‘I have a dream that one day ,’ he recognized that things are not going to get better overnight, but such sentiment is needed to help people stay committed day-to-day until the country can honestly say, ‘free at last!'”

Media contact: Lesley Henton, 979-845-5591, [email protected].

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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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“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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How We Remember the 'I Have a Dream' Speech 50 Years Later

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s iconic "I Have a Dream" speech, news outlets, veterans of the march, and the global community have come together to reflect on that historic day.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s iconic "I Have a Dream" speech, news outlets, veterans of the march and the global community have come together to reflect on that historic day. Some remembrances, like Google's "I Have a Dream" doodle and tweets of the speech, have been small, while others have inspired long essays on how we still feel effects of the speech today. The New York Times ' Michicko Kakutani describes how the most powerful parts of King's speech were improvised on the spot:

Dr. King was about halfway through his prepared speech when Mahalia Jackson... shouted out to him from the speakers’ stand: “Tell ’em about the ‘Dream,’ Martin, tell ’em about the ‘Dream’!” She was referring to a riff he had delivered on earlier occasions, and Dr. King pushed the text of his remarks to the side and began an extraordinary improvisation on the dream theme that would become one of the most recognizable refrains in the world.

Kakutani's notes King's ability to "convey the urgency of his arguments through language richly layered with biblical and historical meanings." And then there's the evidence of King's legacy today. The speech "can still move people to tears," she writes. Just as King was inspired by the Bible and Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address, President Obama was inspired by King. Kakutani writes:

President Obama, who once wrote about his mother’s coming home “with books on the civil rights movement, the recordings of Mahalia Jackson, the speeches of Dr. King,” has described the leaders of the movement as “giants whose shoulders we stand on.” Some of his own speeches owe a clear debt to Dr. King’s ideas and words.

Several newspapers dug through the archives to post their 1963 coverage of the speech, which gives a sense of how the country saw the march when it happened. The New York Times tweeted a PDF of its front page the day after the march.

And The Washington Post released an interactive version of their cover, linking to the full text of the stories. "More than 200,000 persons jammed the Mall here yesterday in the biggest civil rights demonstration in the Nation’s history," Robert E. Baker wrote in a story published on August 29, 1963 paper. "This was the 'March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom', a one-day rally demanding a breakthrough in civil rights for Negroes." But as Politico's Mike Allen notes, the Post didn't include a single line from King's speech, only noting he was a speaker at the end of the article.

The Afro-American , a Baltimore weekly paper, went with a bolder headline :

Powerful front page of The Afro-American 50 years earlier on the March on Washington. pic.twitter.com/EElrUYf4Al — andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) August 24, 2013

The Dalai Lama, riffing on the "Dream" ideology, posted a YouTube video on Tuesday expressing his own dream, that this century the world might become a global family. "In order to achieve that, we need a sense of oneness of humanity," he said.

But the most compelling tributes came from people who were there at the march 50 years ago. “You could just feel the energy around, not screaming, not hollering, but an atmosphere of togetherness," Dr. Shirley Johnson told NBC Miami . "I remember every detail like it was an hour ago, as if it were a film loop in my brain," David Morrison told Lancaster Online .

Rep. John Lewis of Georgia was the youngest person to speak at the march, and as he said in the video below, he's the only march speaker still alive today. In the video he spoke with Bill Moyers, students and tourists, walking them through his memories of the day. "I felt very honored to be there on that date, 50 years ago, and I feel honored to have an opportunity to come here almost 50 years later," Lewis said.

Lewis talked about the march with Stephen Colbert earlier this month .

The New York Times

The learning network | text to text | ‘i have a dream’ and ‘the lasting power of dr. king’s dream speech’.

Text to Text | ‘I Have a Dream’ and ‘The Lasting Power of Dr. King’s Dream Speech’

American History

Teaching ideas based on New York Times content.

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Last summer was the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. painted his dream of racial equality and justice for the nation that still resonates with us. “I have a dream,” he proclaimed, “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.” In this Text to Text , we pair Dr. King’s pivotal “I Have a Dream” speech with a reflection by the Times literary critic Michiko Kakutani, who explores why this singular speech has such lasting power.

Background: The speech that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered on Aug. 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial was not the speech he had prepared in his notes and stayed up nearly all night writing.

Dr. King was the closing speaker at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and the “Dream” speech that inspired a nation and helped galvanize the civil rights movement almost never happened. The march itself almost never happened, as David Brooks writes , because the Urban League, the N.A.A.C.P. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference either chose to opt out or were focusing their energy elsewhere before the events in Birmingham, Ala., in May 1963, with fire hoses and snapping dogs turned on protesters, helped reignite the call for a national march. The speech almost never happened because Dr. King didn’t think he had time to say all he wanted to say in the five minutes he was allotted — at the end of a long, hot summer day before the crowds were ready to disperse and go home.

But Dr. King was “the son, grandson and great-grandson of Baptist ministers,” Michiko Kakutani writes, and he “was comfortable with the black church’s oral tradition, and he knew how to read his audience and react to it.” In the middle of his speech, the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson urged him from behind the podium, “Tell ’em about the ‘Dream,’ Martin, tell ’em about the ‘Dream’!” She was referring to a riff he had delivered many times before, and in that moment, Dr. King broke from his prepared remarks and shared his transcendent vision for the nation’s future.

Below, we excerpted only the first part of Dr. King’s speech, but students should read the entire speech or this abridged version (PDF). For greater effect, they can listen to the audio or watch the video of Dr. King’s delivery while they read along.

Ms. Kakutani, a Pulitzer Prize-winning literary critic for The Times, reflects on the speech’s lasting power on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. We offer an excerpt that introduces her analysis, but we recommend that students read the entire article to explore her evidence for what makes the speech so remarkable.

Key Questions: Why is Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech so powerful, even 50 years later?

Activity Sheets: As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature:

• Comparing Two or More Texts
• Double-Entry Chart for Close Reading
• Document Analysis Questions

Excerpt 1: From “The Lasting Power of Dr. King’s Dream Speech,” by Michiko Kakutani

It was late in the day and hot, and after a long march and an afternoon of speeches about federal legislation, unemployment and racial and social justice, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. finally stepped to the lectern, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, to address the crowd of 250,000 gathered on the National Mall. He began slowly, with magisterial gravity, talking about what it was to be black in America in 1963 and the “shameful condition” of race relations a hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Unlike many of the day’s previous speakers, he did not talk about particular bills before Congress or the marchers’ demands. Instead, he situated the civil rights movement within the broader landscape of history — time past, present and future — and within the timeless vistas of Scripture. Dr. King was about halfway through his prepared speech when Mahalia Jackson — who earlier that day had delivered a stirring rendition of the spiritual “I Been ’Buked and I Been Scorned” — shouted out to him from the speakers’ stand: “Tell ’em about the ‘Dream,’ Martin, tell ’em about the ‘Dream’!” She was referring to a riff he had delivered on earlier occasions, and Dr. King pushed the text of his remarks to the side and began an extraordinary improvisation on the dream theme that would become one of the most recognizable refrains in the world. With his improvised riff, Dr. King took a leap into history, jumping from prose to poetry, from the podium to the pulpit. His voice arced into an emotional crescendo as he turned from a sobering assessment of current social injustices to a radiant vision of hope — of what America could be. “I have a dream,” he declared, “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!” Many in the crowd that afternoon, 50 years ago on Wednesday, had taken buses and trains from around the country. Many wore hats and their Sunday best — “People then,” the civil rights leader John Lewis would recall, “when they went out for a protest, they dressed up” — and the Red Cross was passing out ice cubes to help alleviate the sweltering August heat. But if people were tired after a long day, they were absolutely electrified by Dr. King. There was reverent silence when he began speaking, and when he started to talk about his dream, they called out, “Amen,” and, “Preach, Dr. King, preach,” offering, in the words of his adviser Clarence B. Jones, “every version of the encouragements you would hear in a Baptist church multiplied by tens of thousands.” You could feel “the passion of the people flowing up to him,” James Baldwin, a skeptic of that day’s March on Washington, later wrote, and in that moment, “it almost seemed that we stood on a height, and could see our inheritance; perhaps we could make the kingdom real.” Dr. King’s speech was not only the heart and emotional cornerstone of the March on Washington, but also a testament to the transformative powers of one man and the magic of his words. Fifty years later, it is a speech that can still move people to tears. Fifty years later, its most famous lines are recited by schoolchildren and sampled by musicians. Fifty years later, the four words “I have a dream” have become shorthand for Dr. King’s commitment to freedom, social justice and nonviolence, inspiring activists from Tiananmen Square to Soweto, Eastern Europe to the West Bank. Why does Dr. King’s “Dream” speech exert such a potent hold on people around the world and across the generations? Part of its resonance resides in Dr. King’s moral imagination. Part of it resides in his masterly oratory and gift for connecting with his audience — be they on the Mall that day in the sun or watching the speech on television or, decades later, viewing it online. And part of it resides in his ability, developed over a lifetime, to convey the urgency of his arguments through language richly layered with biblical and historical meanings….

Excerpt 2: From “I Have a Dream,” by the Rev. Dr. 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 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 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 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….

For Writing or Discussion

• Michiko Kakutani asks: “Why does Dr. King’s ‘Dream’ speech exert such a potent hold on people around the world and across the generations?” What answer does she provide? What is the most powerful evidence she uses to back up her analysis?
• Ms. Kakutani explains that “with his improvised riff, Dr. King took a leap into history, jumping from prose to poetry, from the podium to the pulpit.” What does she mean by that description?
• After reading, listening or watching Dr. King’s “Dream” speech, describe your reaction. What do you find powerful or moving in the speech? Do you have a favorite line or phrase? Explain.
• How does Dr. King use figurative language and other poetic and oratorical devices, such as repetition and theme, to make his speech more powerful?
• What historical and biblical allusions do you recognize within the speech? Which allusions do you find most compelling, and why?
• Have we achieved Dr. King’s dream 50 years later? What progress do you think this country has made since the March on Washington with regard to civil rights? What progress do we still need to make? Cite evidence to support your opinion.

Going Further

1. Witnesses to History: How did people at the time react — to Dr. King’s “Dream” speech as well as to the march as a whole? The Times gathered reflections from readers who attended the march . Choose one or two memories to read in the Interactive. What was most powerful about the march for them? What was their recollection of Dr. King’s speech?

Alternatively, read James Reston’s 1963 news analysis published the day after the march in The Times to understand one contemporary critic’s perspective. Mr. Reston writes:

It was Dr. King who, near the end of the day, touched the vast audience…. But Dr. King brought them alive in the late afternoon with a peroration that was an anguished echo from all the old American reformers. Roger Williams calling for religious liberty. Sam Adams calling for political liberty, old man Thoreau denouncing coercion, William Lloyd Garrison demanding emancipation, and Eugene V. Debs crying for economic equality — Dr. King echoed them all. “I have a dream,” he cried again and again. And each time the dream was a promise out of our ancient articles of faith: phrases from the Constitution. lines from the great anthem of the nation, guarantees from the Bill of Rights, all ending with a vision that they all one day might come true.

How does Mr. Reston view the “Dream” speech? What additional insights does this news analysis give you about how The Times, or the mainstream news media in general, might have viewed the event at the time?

2. Other Civil Rights Speeches: Dr. King’s “Dream” speech is the best known of a long line of civil rights speeches. The Times collected other speeches that have influenced perceptions of race in America, including Malcolm X’s “The Ballot or the Bullet” and Fannie Lou Hamer’s testimony at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Choose one speech and compare it to “I Have a Dream” in both tone and message.

3. Nonviolent Resistance: Dr. King’s speech was grounded in a larger movement committed to nonviolent resistance. Read the Times columnist David Brooks’s “The Ideas Behind the March,” and then consider the following questions:

• Mr. Brooks writes: “Nonviolent coercion was an ironic form of aggression. Nonviolence furnished the movement with a series of tactics that allowed it to remain on permanent offense.” What does he mean by that? How does this analysis help explain why nonviolence is often so effective?
• What current issue do you think would be well served by a nonviolent reform movement like the civil rights movement? Why is this issue important to you, and what actions would you want such a movement to take to make change?

4. Assessing the Dream: Daniel R. Smith attended both the March on Washington in 1963 and the 50th anniversary commemoration last August. Five decades after Dr. King’s historic speech, Mr. Smith reflected on how much progress the nation has made in terms of civil rights, but he also wondered if “the pace has slowed considerably.” Read “50 Years After March, Views of Fitful Progress” and study the related graphic analyzing change over time in key areas like education and jobs. How much progress do you think the country has made in civil rights since 1963? How much progress do we still need to make? Cite evidence to support your opinion.

More Resources:

Celebrating M.L.K. Day — news articles, Opinion articles, multimedia and lesson plans related to Dr. King and the civil rights movement

Additional Lesson Plans — by the Gilder Lehrman Institute and PBS for middle school and high school students

This resource may be used to address the academic standards listed below.

Common Core E.L.A. Anchor Standards

1   Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

2   Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

4   Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.

5   Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.

Comments are no longer being accepted.

Another fantastic lesson plan. I teach AP English Language and Composition. King’s writings are an essential part of the curriculum; these ideas will be great springboards for discussion. Thank you!

James Mulhern, //www.synthesizingeducation.net Atlantic Technical Center Magnet High School Coconut Creek, Florida

Remarkable Rev, Dr Martin Luther King, an exemplary and epitome of peace movement, who has shown extreme rationality in pursuit of justice, equality and freedom without any violence, taught us how to live a life with a high plane of dignity and prosperity, a life of liberty and equality, a life of complete unanimity and harmony in regard with racism. He taught us the real meaning of revolution……. revolution forwarded to bring the bright and sparkling light of hope of peace and tranquillity. His philosophies, ideologies and of course his dream for AMERICANS reflect his heart which is replete with abundance of humanity, compassion, fraternity and brotherhood. Yes, I have a dream and the dream is to live your dream.

Martin Luther King Jr. had the most memorable speak ever in the history of time. Something new that I have learned about Dr. King’s speech is that it was not the one he had prepared for the event. It amazes me that he still managed to say such a magnificent speak and it was not the one he was preparing for it just happened. I think Martin Luther King Jr. speech of “I Have a Dream” is still so powerful till this day is because it was something he was fighting for, for everybody and it was something that was so unique to everybody to hear it was wonderful. The main reason for the speech is for everyone to see that we are equal and for the future to be better than how it was, it just needed to be different. Many people loved the speech that he did but then again there were also others who disliked for the meaning it was about. The people who did not like it probably did not like it because they wanted it to stay the same and were probably taught to hate on others for a reason. Martin to me was a very unique man for doing what he did but there were also others who did the same thing and stood up for what they believed in. Everyone including Martin made others realize what was going on and things needed to be different. So it gave others confidence to do something towards a situation that they may not like and to say something about. The speech was a very peaceful way to say what the problem of the situation was it was not a violent thing to do but it was also dangerous. He did not care that if some were hating on him because of the speech or what he was doing, he must have been proud for what he was doing, I now I would be proud. This speech will always be around and very memorable till this day and till the future.

What's Next

How Martin Luther King Jr. Changed His Mind About America

M ore than fifty years after his death, Martin Luther King Jr. remains a towering figure in the history of American civil rights. As with most influential thinkers, there is a certain amount of ambiguity in the public understanding of King and his legacy. White Americans were very skeptical of King while he was alive, but as his reputation and popularity grew, advocates of very different positions tried to claim him for their own. Nowadays conservatives are fond of invoking his most famous speech, 1963’s I Have a Dream , with its vision of a world in where people “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Progressives are fonder of The Other America , a more radical speech from 1967, where he said that we may “have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words of the bad people and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say ‘wait on time.’”

Those two Kings are ones we know, but there are other Kings we need to listen to as well. The I Have a Dream speech gives us the standard story of America. According to this story, America starts with the Declaration of Independence, which states our foundational values, particularly equality. The Founders’ Constitution turns these values into law—imperfectly at first, but American history is a progress towards redeeming the “promissory note” of the Declaration, and one day we will “live out the true meaning of … ‘all men are created equal.’”

This story is comforting and reassuring, but it is actually a barrier to progress, as the King of The Other America came to see. For one thing, it supports what he called the indifference of the good people, the idea that social progress “rolls in on the wheels of inevitability.” For another, it tells us to look to Founding America and the Declaration of Independence as the source of our fundamental ideals. But doing that tells us that those ideals can co-exist with white supremacy. The truth is that Founding America was not a nation dedicated to our idea of equality. The Betsy Ross flag shows us thirteen stars in a circle, and every star represents a state where slavery was legal.

The idea that the Declaration provides the way forward is deeply problematic. A younger King saw this. As a junior in high school in 1944, competing in a debate contest, he delivered a speech called The Negro and the Constitution . Like I Have a Dream , this speech examined whether the treatment of Blacks in America was consistent with American values. But unlike I Have a Dream , it did not locate those values in the Founding. “America gave its full pledge of freedom seventy-five years ago,” King said: in 1868, when the 14th Amendment was ratified. The Civil War and Reconstruction created a “new order,” he said, “backed by amendments to the national constitution.” It is these amendments, not the Declaration, that promised equality.

Read More: What It Is Was Like Hearing Martin Luther King Jr. Give ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech

The focus on Reconstruction gives us a different origin story. This one tells us our mission is to take up the struggle of a war for liberty and a remaking of society in pursuit of justice and equality. It is less reassuring, which is presumably why King abandoned it in I Have a Dream , seeking to enlist white moderates in his cause. But the allies he won turned out to be the“good people” of The Other America who sat by and counseled patience. And if this story is more divisive, it is also more true. In the Civil War, the U.S. issued an emancipation proclamation—in the Revolution, the British did. In the Reconstruction Constitution, the U.S. banned slavery—in the Founders’ Constitution, they protected it. And it is more inclusive; it locates our values not in documents written by white slaveowners but by those who fought to end slavery, blacks as well as whites.

This is a better story. And it is the story that King came back to. The day before his assassination in 1968, he spoke in Memphis, where sanitation workers were striking for decent wages and working conditions . King was ill that night and had asked a friend to speak in his place, but when he heard that hundreds of supporters were waiting to hear him, he went to the Mason Temple, took the stage, and spoke extemporaneously. I’ve Been to the Mountaintop starts by considering the question of what moment in human history King would like to live in. He considers some of the high points of antiquity—classical Greece and Rome, the Renaissance. He ignores the Founding entirely—the first moment of American history that gets a reference is the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. In the end, King says he would like to live just where he is, because “Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And … the cry is always the same: ‘We want to be free.’”

We march for freedom, King told his listeners, and we will win if we stick together. He knew that freedom had a cost. “I may not get there with you.” But “we, as a people, will get to the promised land.” And he sent the audience out into the night with one final spur, invoking the great clash where white and black Americans fought together for the freedom of all. The last line of the last speech that King ever delivered is not from the Declaration or the Constitution. It is from the Civil War; it is the first line of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

That is when our America was born, not with the Revolution and the Founding but with the Civil War and Reconstruction. The values we must carry forward are not those of Thomas Jefferson and the Framers of the Constitution; they are the values of Abraham Lincoln and the Reconstruction Congress. It is time for us to see this. It is time for us to join that march.

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MLK’s dream for America is one of the stars of the 60th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington

Associated Press democracy, race and ethnicity reporter Gary Fields talks about the 1963 March on Washington and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have A Dream” speech. (Aug. 23) (AP production by Serkan Gurbuz)

FILE - The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., addresses marchers during his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. (AP Photo, File)

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A visitor looks closely at the original copy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have a Dream” speech on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

FILE - In this Aug. 28, 1963 file photo, The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. waves to the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial for his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington. (AP Photo, File)

Martin Luther King III, left, and Arndrea Waters King sit for an interview with the Associated Press on Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2023, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Civil Rights icon Andrew Young speaks during an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2023, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., reflects on her time as a young civil rights activist during the 1963 March on Washington, during an Associated Press interview in her office on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Aaron Bryant, museum curator of photography, visual culture and contemporary history at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, talks to the Associated Press about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s original speech from the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Friday, Aug. 18, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

FILE - The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech to thousands of civil rights supporters gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, on Aug. 28, 1963, in Washington. Actor-singer Sammy Davis Jr. can be seen at the far bottom right. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - A framed copy of the original program from the 1963 March on Washington, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, is seen on one of the shelves in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Oct. 13, 2009, during the Obama administration. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

FILE - An arial view of the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 1963, in Washington. (AP Photo/File)

A visitor reads a display about the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The last part of the speech took less time to deliver than it takes to boil an egg, but “I Have A Dream” is one of American history’s most famous orations and most inspiring.

On Aug. 28, 1963, from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. began by speaking of poverty, segregation and discrimination and how the United States had reneged on its promise of equality for Black Americans. If anyone remembers that dystopian beginning, they don’t talk about it.

What is etched into people’s memory is the pastoral flourish that marked the last five minutes and presented a soaring vision of what the nation might be and the freedom that equality for all could bring.

As participants prepare to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom , that five-minute piece of King’s 16-minute address is the star of that day and today it is the measuring stick of the country’s progress.

How did that memorable moment come to be? Were there other speakers?

King was one of several prominent figures speaking to the many tens of thousands gathered on the National Mall that summer day. Others included A. Phillip Randolph, the march director and founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Roy Wilkins, the NAACP’s executive secretary; Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers; and John Lewis, a 23-year-old who led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later was a longtime congressman.

There were memorable moments before King spoke.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, who today is the District of Columbia’s veteran nonvoting delegate to Congress, was a SNCC member who helped organize the march. She remembers that march leaders got Lewis to tone down his planned speech because of concern it was too inflammatory. “He had phrases in there about, for example, Sherman marching through Georgia,” Norton said, a reference to Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman burning most of Atlanta during the Civil War. “So we had to work with the leaders of the march to change a little bit of that rhetoric.”

King had no peer at the microphone, she said, acknowledging she does not remember now what others may have said. “I’m afraid that Martin Luther King’s speech drowned out everything. It was so eloquent that it kind of surpassed every other speech.”

Did King deliver the speech off the cuff?

The first two-thirds were from written text. The actual speech he used is on loan now at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, in the “Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom” gallery of the museum, and shows where he broke script.

King lieutenant Andrew Young said in an interview that he worked with King preparing the text and “none of the things that we remember were in his speech. They didn’t give him but nine minutes and he was trying to write a nine-minute speech.”

A King biographer, Jonathan Eig, said King hit the end of his written remarks and kept going because “he was Martin Luther King” and “it was time to do what he loved to do best, and that’s to give a sermon.”

Had King talked about a dream before?

Although he set the text aside, his deviation was not extemporaneous in the truest since of the word.

Eight months before the March on Washington, King gave an address in Rocky Mount, North Carolina , with similar themes, including a dream.

In June 1963, King spoke in Detroit and opened with the same recognition of Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation before noting that 100 years later, Black people in the U.S. were not free. He talked of the circumstances and sense of urgency but then moved into what he said was a “dream deeply rooted in the American dream.”

The speech mirrored points he would speak of two months later.

Although King used the theme on several occasions “he always made it sound fresh. That’s kind of how he operated,” said Keith Miller, an Arizona State professor who has studied and written extensively about King’s speeches and addresses.

Legend has it that renowned gospel singer Mahalia Jackson prompted King to make the addition?

Whether Jackson was the catalyst or cheered him on after he started, King did not initially intend to speak about a dream and Jackson did say, “Tell them about the dream Martin.” Whatever the close sequence, the two are intertwined now in that moment.

Young said the speech “wasn’t going too well, but everybody was polite listening. But then Mahalia Jackson said, ‘Tell them about the dream Martin’ and he must have heard it or it was in his spirit any way and he took off.”

Arndrea Waters King, King’s daughter-in-law, said Jackson’s suggestion was the moment “that he just really broke out and really started to deliver, if nothing else, what most people remember when they remember the dream.”

Eig, author of “King: A Life,” said he has listened to the master tape made by Motown and she clearly pushes King about the dream, “but it’s only after he has already begun the dream portion of the speech.” Norton, who was nearby and heard Jackson, agrees that was the sequence.

How important was the march to the steps toward equality in the 1960s?

The diversity and size of the crowd and energy were major drivers for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as well as the fair housing law, Norton said. “It would have been very hard for Congress to ignore 250,000 people coming from all over the country, from every member’s district.”

Aaron Bryant, curator of photography, visual culture and contemporary history at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, said the impact was immediate in some ways.

“After the March on Washington, you had some of the organizers, some of the leaders of the march actually meeting with (President) John Kennedy and (Vice President) Lyndon Johnson, to talk more strategically about legislation. So it wasn’t just a dream. It was about a plan and then putting that plan into action,” Bryant said.

Historians and other luminaries of that time said tragedies and atrocities fortified those plans. Those include the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four girls two weeks after the march; the murders of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in 1964; and the televised beatings of civil rights activists on Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, in March 1965.

Why the focus on the final five minutes?

Eig believes that focus on hope and not the harsher reality of the day and the lack of progress is due in part to the predominantly white media that chose the inspirational part of the speech over King calling for accountability.

That focus has done a “disservice to King” and his overall message, Eig said, because “we forget about the challenging part of that speech where he says that there are insufficient funds in the vaults of opportunity in this nation.”

Has the dream been achieved?

Bryant said the answer to that probably varies within generations, but a democracy “is always going to be a work in progress. I think particularly as ideas of citizenship and democracy and definitions among different groups change over the course of time.”

Bryant said history shows the progress that followed the march. “The question is how do we compare where we were then to where we are now?”

In the eyes of King’s older son, Martin Luther King III, “Many of us, and I certainly am one, thought that we would be further.” He referred to the rewriting of history today and the rise in public hate and hostility, often driven by political leaders.

“There used to be civility. You could disagree without being disagreeable,” he said.

MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech remains etched in American memory as it turns 60

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The last part of the speech took only minutes, but “I Have A Dream” is one of American history’s most famous orations and most inspiring.

On Aug. 28, 1963, from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. began by speaking of poverty, segregation and discrimination and how the United States had reneged on its promise of equality for Black Americans.

But what is etched into people’s memory is the pastoral flourish that marked the last five minutes and presented a soaring vision of what the nation might be and the freedom that equality for all could bring.

As participants prepare to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, that five-minute piece of King’s 16-minute address remains the measuring stick of the country’s progress.

How did that moment come to be?

King was one of several prominent figures speaking to the many tens of thousands gathered on the National Mall that summer day. Others included A. Philip Randolph, the march director and founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Roy Wilkins, the NAACP’s executive secretary; Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers; and John Lewis , a 23-year-old who led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was later a longtime congressman .

There were memorable moments before King spoke.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, who today is the District of Columbia’s veteran nonvoting delegate to Congress, was a SNCC member who helped organize the march. She remembers that march leaders got Lewis to tone down his planned speech because of concern it was too inflammatory.

World & Nation

Visitors to Lincoln Memorial say America has its flaws, but see gains since March on Washington

Nearly 60 years since the March on Washington, fencing and construction workers greet visitors to the Lincoln Memorial, signaling the monument to the nation’s 16th president is a work in progress.

Aug. 25, 2023

“He had phrases in there about, for example, Sherman marching through Georgia,” Norton said, a reference to Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman burning most of Atlanta during the Civil War. “So we had to work with the leaders of the march to change a little bit of that rhetoric.”

King had no peer at the microphone, she said, acknowledging she does not remember now what others may have said. “I’m afraid that Martin Luther King’s speech drowned out everything. It was so eloquent that it kind of surpassed every other speech.”

Biden and Harris will meet with King family on 60th anniversary of March on Washington

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet with organizers of the 1963 gathering and relatives of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

From the Archives: Los Angeles Times images of Martin Luther King Jr.

April 3, 2018

Did King deliver the speech off the cuff?

The first two-thirds were from written text. The actual speech he used is on loan now at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, in the “Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom” gallery of the museum, and shows where he broke script.

King lieutenant Andrew Young said in an interview that he worked with King preparing the text and “none of the things that we remember were in his speech. They didn’t give him but nine minutes and he was trying to write a nine-minute speech.”

A King biographer, Jonathan Eig, said King hit the end of his written remarks and kept going because “he was Martin Luther King” and “it was time to do what he loved to do best, and that’s to give a sermon.”

Fifty years later, looking back at King’s ‘Dream’ speech

Vernon Watkins was there in 1963, when the March on Washington galvanized him to change his life. ‘Have we reached the goals of that day?’ he wonders now.

Aug. 24, 2013

Had King talked about a dream before?

Although he set the text aside, his deviation was not extemporaneous in the truest since of the word.

Eight months before the March on Washington, King gave an address in Rocky Mount, N.C., with similar themes, including a dream.

In June 1963, King spoke in Detroit and opened with the same recognition of Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation before noting that 100 years later, Black people in the U.S. were not free. He talked of the circumstances and sense of urgency but then moved into what he said was a “dream deeply rooted in the American dream.”

Biden: Americans should ‘pay attention’ to Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy

President Biden marks the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as the first sitting president to deliver a Sunday sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Jan. 15, 2023

The speech mirrored points he would speak of two months later.

Although King used the theme on several occasions “he always made it sound fresh. That’s kind of how he operated,” said Keith Miller, an Arizona State professor who has studied and written extensively about King’s speeches and addresses.

Did gospel singer Mahalia Jackson prompt King?

Whether Jackson was the catalyst or cheered him on after he started, King did not initially intend to speak about a dream, and Jackson did say, “Tell them about the dream Martin.” Whatever the sequence, the two are intertwined now in that moment.

Young said the speech “wasn’t going too well, but everybody was polite listening. But then Mahalia Jackson said, ‘Tell them about the dream Martin’ and he must have heard it or it was in his spirit any way and he took off.”

Arndrea Waters King, King’s daughter-in-law, said Jackson’s suggestion was the moment “that he just really broke out and really started to deliver, if nothing else, what most people remember when they remember the dream.”

Eig, author of “King: A Life,” said he has listened to the master tape made by Motown and she clearly pushes King about the dream, “but it’s only after he has already begun the dream portion of the speech.” Norton, who was nearby and heard Jackson, agrees that was the sequence.

How important was the march?

The diversity and size of the crowd and energy were major drivers for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 , as well as the fair housing law, Norton said. “It would have been very hard for Congress to ignore 250,000 people coming from all over the country, from every member’s district.”

Aaron Bryant, curator of photography, visual culture and contemporary history at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, said the impact was immediate in some ways.

“After the March on Washington, you had some of the organizers, some of the leaders of the march actually meeting with [President] John Kennedy and [Vice President] Lyndon Johnson, to talk more strategically about legislation. So it wasn’t just a dream. It was about a plan and then putting that plan into action,” Bryant said.

Historians and other luminaries of that time said tragedies and atrocities fortified those plans. Those include the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., that killed four girls two weeks after the march; the murders of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Miss. in 1964; and the televised beatings of civil rights activists on Bloody Sunday in Selma, Ala. , in March 1965.

Why the focus on the final five minutes?

Eig believes that focus on hope and not the harsher reality of the day and the lack of progress is due in part to the predominantly white media that chose the inspirational part of the speech over King calling for accountability.

That focus has done a “disservice to King” and his overall message, Eig said, because “we forget about the challenging part of that speech where he says that there are insufficient funds in the vaults of opportunity in this nation.”

Is the dream a ‘work in progress’?

Bryant said the answer to that probably varies within generations, but a democracy “is always going to be a work in progress. I think particularly as ideas of citizenship and democracy and definitions among different groups change over the course of time.”

Bryant said history shows the progress that followed the march. “The question is, how do we compare where we were then to where we are now?”

In the eyes of King’s older son, Martin Luther King III, “Many of us, and I certainly am one, thought that we would be further.” He referred to the rewriting of history today and the rise in public hate and hostility, often driven by political leaders.

“There used to be civility,” he said. “You could disagree without being disagreeable.”

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Black History Month 2024

5 mlk speeches you should know. spoiler: 'i have a dream' isn't on the list.

Scott Neuman

The Rev. Ralph Abernathy (left) shakes hands with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Ala., on March 22, 1956, as a big crowd of supporters cheers for King, who had just been found guilty of leading the Montgomery bus boycott. Gene Herrick/AP hide caption

The Rev. Ralph Abernathy (left) shakes hands with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Ala., on March 22, 1956, as a big crowd of supporters cheers for King, who had just been found guilty of leading the Montgomery bus boycott.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s " I Have a Dream " speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, is so famous that it often eclipses his other speeches.

King's greatest contribution to the Civil Rights Movement was his oratory, says Jason Miller, an English professor at North Carolina State University who has written extensively on King's speeches.

Black History Month 2024 has begun. Here's this year's theme and other things to know

"King's first biographer was a dear friend of Dr. King's, L.D. Reddick ," Miller says. Reddick once suggested to King that maybe more marching and less speaking was needed to push the cause of civil rights forward. According to Miller, King is said to have responded, "My dear man, you never deny an artist his medium."

Miller says that in his research, he found numerous examples of King reworking and recycling old speeches. "He would rewrite them ... just to change phrasings and rhythms. And so he prepared a great deal, often 19 lines per page on a yellow legal sheet."

Often, King would write notes to himself in the margins: "what tenor and tone to deliver," Miller says.

That phrasing and an understanding of cadence were all important to the success of these speeches, according to Carolyn Calloway-Thomas, director of graduate studies at the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University.

King's training in the pulpit gave him a strong insight into what moves an audience, she says. "Preachers are performers. They know when to pause. How long to pause. And with what effect. And he certainly was a great user of dramatic pauses."

Here are four of King's speeches that sometimes get overlooked, plus the one he delivered the day before his 1968 assassination. Collectively, they represent historical signposts on the road to civil rights.

" Give Us the Ballot " (May 17, 1957 — Washington, D.C.)

King spoke at the Lincoln Memorial three years to the day after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education , which struck down the "separate but equal" doctrine that had allowed segregation in public schools.

But Jim Crow persisted throughout much of the South. The yearlong Montgomery bus boycott , sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks, had ended only months before King's speech. And the Voting Rights Act of 1965 , which sought to end disenfranchisement of Black voters, was still eight years away.

"It's a very important speech because he's talking about the importance of voting and he's responding to some of the Southern resistance to the Brown decision," says Vicki Crawford, director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Collection at Morehouse College, King's alma mater .

U.S. deputy marshals escort 6-year-old Ruby Bridges from William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in November 1960. The first-grader was the only Black child enrolled in the school, where parents of white students were boycotting the court-ordered integration law and were taking their children out of school. AP hide caption

U.S. deputy marshals escort 6-year-old Ruby Bridges from William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in November 1960. The first-grader was the only Black child enrolled in the school, where parents of white students were boycotting the court-ordered integration law and were taking their children out of school.

The speech calls out both major political parties for betraying "the cause of justice" and failing to do enough to ensure civil rights for Blacks. He accuses Democrats of "capitulating to the prejudices and undemocratic practices of the Southern Dixiecrats," referring to the party's pro-segregation wing. The Republicans, King said, had instead capitulated "to the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing, reactionary Northerners."

King speaks at a mass demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on May 17, 1957, as civil rights leaders called on the U.S. government to put more teeth into the Supreme Court's desegregation decisions. Charles Gorry/AP hide caption

King speaks at a mass demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on May 17, 1957, as civil rights leaders called on the U.S. government to put more teeth into the Supreme Court's desegregation decisions.

He also indicts Northern liberals who are "so bent on seeing all sides" that they are "neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm" in their commitment to civil rights.

"King [was] calling on both parties to take a look at themselves," Crawford says.

With the movement gaining steam, King used his speech to take stock of where things stood and what must be done next, Calloway-Thomas says. "He is revisiting the status of African American people."

" Our God Is Marching On! " (March 25, 1965 — Montgomery, Ala.)

The speech was delivered after the last of three Selma-Montgomery marches to call for voting rights. Protesters were beaten by Alabama law enforcement officials at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on March 7 in what came to be known as Bloody Sunday . Among the nearly 60 wounded that day by club-wielding police was John Lewis, the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), who suffered a fractured skull. (Lewis later served 17 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives.) A second attempt to reach Montgomery a few days later was again turned back at the bridge. In a third try, marchers finally reached the steps of the Alabama State Capitol on March 25.

Rep. John Lewis, A Force In The Civil Rights Movement, Dead At 80

"Finally the group of protesters gets all the way to the Capitol, and King delivers a speech to what we think is about 25,000 people," Miller says. The speech is also often referred to as the "How Long? Not Long" speech because of that powerful refrain, Miller says.

Jonathan Eig, author of the biography King: A Life , published last year, says he thinks about three-fourths of the speech was written out. "Then [King] goes off script and gives a sermon."

That's when he answers the question "How long?" for his audience. How long will it be until Black people have the same rights as white people? "Not long, because no lie can live forever," King tells his exuberant listeners.

"That's the part that really echoes. No question," Eig says. "And I think that's when he knew he was at his best. He knew that he could bring the crowd to its feet and inspire them."

Also notable is a famous anecdote that King shared in his speech, one that appeared earlier in his 1963 " Letter from a Birmingham Jail " addressed to his "fellow clergymen." It relates the words of Sister Pollard, a 70-year-old Black woman who had walked everywhere, refusing to ride the Montgomery buses during the 1955-1956 boycott.

"One day, she was asked while walking if she didn't want to ride," King said, speaking to the crowd that had just successfully marched from Selma to Montgomery. "And when she answered, 'No,' the person said, 'Well, aren't you tired?' And with her ungrammatical profundity, she said, 'My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.'"

"And in a real sense this afternoon, we can say that our feet are tired but our souls are rested," he said.

The story of Sister Pollard would be used again in the coming years.

But the speech may be best remembered today for another line, where King said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

In fact, King was using the words of a 19th-century Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker . Parker was an abolitionist who secretly funded John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, often seen as an opening salvo of the Civil War. In a sermon given seven years before the raid, Parker used the line that King would pick up more than a century later.

"Dr. King absorbed all kinds of material, heard from others, used it on his own. But this is what we call appropriation or transformation when the old seems new," Miller says.

" Beyond Vietnam " (April 4, 1967 — New York City)

King had already begun speaking out about the war in Vietnam, but this speech was his most forceful statement on the conflict to date. Black soldiers were dying in disproportionate numbers . King noted the irony that in Vietnam, "Negro and white boys" were killing and dying alongside each other "for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools."

"So we watch them, in brutal solidarity, burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago," he said. "I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor."

An infantry soldier runs across a burned-out clearing in Vietnam on Jan. 4, 1967. Horst Faas/AP hide caption

An infantry soldier runs across a burned-out clearing in Vietnam on Jan. 4, 1967.

SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael , a major civil rights figure, had come out against the war and encouraged King to join him. But some in King's own inner circle had cautioned him against speaking about Vietnam.

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Although powerful and timely, the speech drew a harsh and immediate reaction from a nation that had only just begun to reckon with the rising casualties and economic toll of the war. Both The Washington Post and The New York Times published editorials criticizing it. The Post said King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people" and the Times said he had "dampened his prospects for becoming the Negro leader who might be able to get the nation 'moving again' on civil rights."

King knew he would take heat for the speech, especially from the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, with whom he'd worked to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, a year later, the Voting Rights Act, through Congress. With the presidential election just 19 months away, continued support of Johnson's Vietnam policy was crucial to his reelection. Nearly 10 months after the speech, however, the Tet Offensive launched by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army would help turn U.S. public opinion against the war and lead Johnson to not seek another term.

But in April 1967, the reaction to the speech was "far worse than King or his advisers imagined," says Miller, of North Carolina State University. Johnson "excommunicated" the civil rights leader, he says, adding that even leaders of the NAACP expressed disappointment that King had focused attention on the war.

"His immediate response was that he was crushed," Miller says. "There are a number of people who have documented that he literally broke down in tears when he realized the kind of backlash towards it."

He was criticized from both sides of the political aisle. Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., a staunch conservative who made a failed run for the presidency in 1964, said King's speech "could border a bit on treason."

"King himself said that he anguished over doing the speech," says Indiana University's Calloway-Thomas.

" The Three Evils of Society " (Aug. 31, 1967 — Chicago)

The three evils King outlines in this speech are poverty, racism and militarism . Referring to Johnson's Great Society program to help lift rural Americans out of poverty, King said that it had been "shipwrecked off the coast of Asia, on the dreadful peninsula of Vietnam" and that meanwhile, "the poor, Black and white are still perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."

Calloway-Thomas calls it "the most scathing critique of American society by King that I have ever read."

"We need, according to him, a radical redistribution of political and economic power," she says, "Is that implying reparations? Is that implying socialism?"

Calloway-Thomas hears in King's words an antecedent to the Black Lives Matter movement. "One sees in that speech some relationship between the rhetoric of Dr. King at that moment and the rhetoric of Black Lives Matter at this moment," she says.

It was also one of the many instances where King quoted poet Langston Hughes, with whom he had become friends. "What happens to a dream deferred? It leads to bewildering frustration and corroding bitterness," King said in a nod to Hughes' most famous poem, " Harlem ."

King and Hughes traveled together to Nigeria in 1960, Miller notes, calling the poet an often unrecognized but nonetheless "central figure" in the early Civil Rights Movement. "They exchanged letters. Dr. King told [Hughes] how much he used his poetry. Dr. King used seven poems by Langston Hughes in his sermons and speeches from 1956 to 1958."

" I've Been to the Mountaintop! " (April 3, 1968 — Memphis, Tenn.)

This is King's last speech, delivered a day before his assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968. He was in the city to lend his support and his voice to the city's striking sanitation workers .

"He wasn't expecting to give a speech that night," according to Clayborne Carson, Martin Luther King, Jr. centennial professor emeritus at Stanford University. "He was hoping to get out of it. He was not feeling well."

"They call him and say, 'The people here want to hear you. They don't want to hear us.' And plus, the place was packed that night" despite a heavy downpour, Carson says. "I think he recognized that people really wanted to hear him. And despite the state of his health, he decided to go."

Martin Luther King Jr. makes his last public appearance, at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tenn., on April 3, 1968. The following day, King was assassinated on his motel balcony. Charles Kelly/AP hide caption

Martin Luther King Jr. makes his last public appearance, at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tenn., on April 3, 1968. The following day, King was assassinated on his motel balcony.

The haunting words, in which King says, "I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you" have led many people to think he was prophesying his own death the following day at the hands of assassin James Earl Ray .

"The speech really does feel a bit like his own eulogy," says Eig. "He's talking about earthly salvation and heavenly salvation. And, in the end, boldly equating himself with Moses, who doesn't live to see the Promised Land."

The speech is largely, if not entirely, extemporaneous. And by the end, King was exhausted, says Carson. "It's pretty clear when you watch the film that he's not in the best shape."

"He barely makes it to the end," he says.

"But he relied on his audience to bring him along," Carson says. "I think it's one of those speeches where the crowd is inspiring him and he's inspiring them. That's what makes it work."

It's a great speech, made greater still because it was his last, says Calloway-Thomas.

"You have this wonderful man who epitomized the social and political situation in the United States in the 20th century," she says. "There he is, dying so tragically and dreadfully. It has a lot of pity and pathos buried inside it."

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Leadership and Martin Luther King’s Dream

• Rosabeth Moss Kanter

“I have a dream” by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is one of the most famous speeches of recent history. Aspiring leaders study it to see how memorable words that sketch a big, compelling vision can inspire significant change. But four words are not the measure of the man. There is much more to […]

“ I have a dream ” by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is one of the most famous speeches of recent history. Aspiring leaders study it to see how memorable words that sketch a big, compelling vision can inspire significant change.

• Rosabeth Moss Kanter is the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, the founding chair of the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative, and a former chief editor of Harvard Business Review. She is the author of Think Outside the Building: How Advanced Leaders Can Change the World One Smart Innovation at a Time (Public Affairs, 2020). RosabethKanter

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Introduction

Martin Luther King, Jr., made history, but he was also transformed by his deep family roots in the African-American Baptist church, his formative experiences in his hometown of Atlanta, his theological studies, his varied models of religious and political leadership, and his extensive network of contacts in the peace and social justice movements of his time. Although King was only 39 at the time of his death, his life was remarkable for the ways it reflected and inspired so many of the twentieth century’s major intellectual, cultural, and political developments.

The son, grandson, and great-grandson of Baptist ministers, Martin Luther King, Jr., named Michael King at birth, was born in Atlanta and spent his first 12 years in the Auburn Avenue home that his parents, the Reverend Michael King  and Alberta Williams King, shared with his maternal grandparents, the Reverend Adam Daniel (A. D.)  Williams  and Jeannie Celeste Williams. After Reverend Williams’ death in 1931, his son-in-law became  Ebenezer Baptist Church ’s new pastor and gradually established himself as a major figure in state and national Baptist groups. The elder King began referring to himself (and later to his son) as Martin Luther King.

King’s formative experiences not only immersed him in the affairs of Ebenezer but also introduced him to the African-American  social gospel  tradition exemplified by his father and grandfather, both of whom were leaders of the Atlanta branch of the  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People  (NAACP). Depression-era breadlines heightened King’s awareness of economic inequities, and his father’s leadership of campaigns against racial discrimination in voting and teachers’ salaries provided a model for the younger King’s own politically engaged ministry. He resisted religious emotionalism and as a teenager questioned some facets of Baptist doctrine, such as the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

During his undergraduate years at Atlanta’s  Morehouse College  from 1944 to 1948, King gradually overcame his initial reluctance to accept his inherited calling. Morehouse president Benjamin E.  Mays  influenced King’s spiritual development, encouraging him to view Christianity as a potential force for progressive social change. Religion professor George  Kelsey  exposed him to biblical criticism and, according to King’s autobiographical sketch, taught him “that behind the legends and myths of the Book were many profound truths which one could not escape” ( Papers  1:43 ). King admired both educators as deeply religious yet also learned men and, by the end of his junior year, such academic role models and the example of his father led King to enter the ministry. He described his decision as a response to an “inner urge” calling him to “serve humanity” ( Papers  1:363 ). He was ordained during his final semester at Morehouse, and by this time King had also taken his first steps toward political activism. He had responded to the postwar wave of anti-black violence by proclaiming in a letter to the editor of the  Atlanta Constitution  that African Americans were “entitled to the basic rights and opportunities of American citizens” ( Papers  1:121 ). During his senior year King joined the Intercollegiate Council, an interracial student discussion group that met monthly at Atlanta’s Emory University.

After leaving Morehouse, King increased his understanding of liberal Christian thought while attending  Crozer Theological Seminary  in Pennsylvania from 1948 to 1951. Initially uncritical of liberal theology, he gradually moved toward Reinhold  Niebuhr ’s neo-orthodoxy, which emphasized the intractability of social evil. Mentored by local minister and King family friend J. Pius  Barbour , he reacted skeptically to a presentation on pacifism by  Fellowship of Reconciliation  leader A. J.  Muste . Moreover, by the end of his seminary studies King had become increasingly dissatisfied with the abstract conceptions of God held by some modern theologians and identified himself instead with the theologians who affirmed  personalism , or a belief in the personality of God. Even as he continued to question and modify his own religious beliefs, he compiled an outstanding academic record and graduated at the top of his class.

In 1951, King began doctoral studies in systematic theology at  Boston University ’s School of Theology, which was dominated by personalist theologians such as Edgar  Brightman  and L. Harold  DeWolf . The papers (including his  dissertation ) that King wrote during his years at Boston University displayed little originality, and some contained extensive plagiarism; but his readings enabled him to formulate an eclectic yet coherent theological perspective. By the time he completed his doctoral studies in 1955, King had refined his exceptional ability to draw upon a wide range of theological and philosophical texts to express his views with force and precision. His capacity to infuse his oratory with borrowed theological insights became evident in his expanding preaching activities in Boston-area churches and at Ebenezer, where he assisted his father during school vacations.

During his stay in Boston, King also met and courted Coretta  Scott , an Alabama-born Antioch College graduate who was then a student at the New England Conservatory of Music. On 18 June 1953, the two students were married in Marion, Alabama, where Scott’s family lived.

Although he considered pursuing an academic career, King decided in 1954 to accept an offer to become the pastor of  Dexter Avenue Baptist Church  in Montgomery, Alabama. In December 1955, when Montgomery black leaders such as Jo Ann  Robinson , E. D.  Nixon , and Ralph  Abernathy  formed the  Montgomery Improvement Association  (MIA) to protest the arrest of NAACP official Rosa  Parks  for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, they selected King to head the new group. In his role as the primary spokesman of the year-long  Montgomery bus boycott , King utilized the leadership abilities he had gained from his religious background and academic training to forge a distinctive protest strategy that involved the mobilization of black churches and skillful appeals for white support. With the encouragement of Bayard  Rustin , Glenn  Smiley , William Stuart  Nelson , and other veteran pacifists, King also became a firm advocate of Mohandas  Gandhi ’s precepts of  nonviolence , which he combined with Christian social gospel ideas.

After the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed Alabama bus segregation laws in  Browder v. Gayle  in late 1956, King sought to expand the nonviolent civil rights movement throughout the South. In 1957, he joined with C. K.  Steele , Fred  Shuttlesworth , and T. J.  Jemison  in founding the  Southern Christian Leadership Conference  (SCLC) with King as president to coordinate civil rights activities throughout the region. Publication of King’s memoir of the boycott,  Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story  (1958), further contributed to his rapid emergence as a national civil rights leader. Even as he expanded his influence, however, King acted cautiously. Rather than immediately seeking to stimulate mass desegregation protests in the South, King stressed the goal of achieving black voting rights when he addressed an audience at the 1957  Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom .

King’s rise to fame was not without personal consequences. In 1958, King was the victim of his first assassination attempt. Although his house had been bombed several times during the Montgomery bus boycott, it was while signing copies of  Stride Toward Freedom  that Izola Ware  Curry  stabbed him with a letter opener. Surgery to remove it was successful, but King had to recuperate for several months, giving up all protest activity.

One of the key aspects of King’s leadership was his ability to establish support from many types of organizations, including labor unions, peace organizations, southern reform organizations, and religious groups. As early as 1956, labor unions, such as the  United Packinghouse Workers of America  and the United Auto Workers, contributed to MIA, and peace activists such as Homer  Jack  alerted their associates to MIA activities. Activists from southern organizations, such as Myles Horton’s  Highlander Folk School  and Anne  Braden ’s Southern Conference Educational Fund, were in frequent contact with King. In addition, his extensive ties to the  National Baptist Convention  provided support from churches all over the nation; and his advisor, Stanley  Levison , ensured broad support from Jewish groups.

King’s recognition of the link between segregation and colonialism resulted in alliances with groups fighting oppression outside the United States, especially in Africa. In March 1957, King traveled to  Ghana  at the invitation of Kwame  Nkrumah  to attend the nation’s independence ceremony. Shortly after returning from Ghana, King joined the  American Committee on Africa , agreeing to serve as vice chairman of an International Sponsoring Committee for a day of protest against South Africa’s  apartheid  government. Later, at an SCLC-sponsored event honoring Kenyan labor leader Tom  Mboya , King further articulated the connections between the African American freedom struggle and those abroad: “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality” ( Papers  5:204 ).

During 1959, he increased his understanding of Gandhian ideas during a month-long visit to  India  sponsored by the  American Friends Service Committee . With Coretta and MIA historian Lawrence D.  Reddick  in tow, King met with many Indian leaders, including Prime Minister Jawaharlal  Nehru . Writing after his return, King stated: “I left India more convinced than ever before that non-violent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom” ( Papers  5:233 ).

Early the following year, he moved his family, which now included two children—Yolanda  King  and Martin Luther  King , III—to Atlanta in order to be nearer to SCLC headquarters in that city and to become co-pastor, with his father, of Ebenezer Baptist Church. (The Kings’ third child, Dexter  King , was born in 1961; their fourth, Bernice  King , was born in 1963.) Soon after King’s arrival in Atlanta, the southern civil rights movement gained new impetus from the student-led lunch counter  sit-in  movement that spread throughout the region during 1960. The sit-ins brought into existence a new protest group, the  Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee  (SNCC), which would often push King toward greater militancy. King came in contact with students, especially those from Nashville such as John  Lewis , James  Bevel , and Diane  Nash , who had been trained in nonviolent tactics by James  Lawson . In October 1960, King’s arrest during a student-initiated protest in Atlanta became an issue in the national presidential campaign when Democratic candidate John F.  Kennedy  called Coretta King to express his concern. The successful efforts of Kennedy supporters to secure King’s release contributed to the Democratic candidate’s narrow victory over Republican candidate Richard  Nixon .

King’s decision to move to Atlanta was partly caused by SCLC’s lack of success during the late 1950s. Associate director Ella  Baker  had complained that SCLC’s Crusade for Citizenship suffered from lack of attention from King. SCLC leaders hoped that with King now in Atlanta, strategy would be improved. The hiring of Wyatt Tee  Walker  as executive director in 1960 was also seen as a step toward bringing efficiency to the organization, while the addition of Dorothy  Cotton  and Andrew  Young  to the staff infused new leadership after SCLC took over the administration of the Citizenship Education Program pioneered by Septima  Clark . Attorney Clarence  Jones  also began to assist King and SCLC with legal matters and to act as King’s advisor.

As the southern protest movement expanded during the early 1960s, King was often torn between the increasingly militant student activists, such as those who participated in the  Freedom Rides , and more cautious national civil rights leaders. During 1961 and 1962, his tactical differences with SNCC activists surfaced during a sustained protest movement in Albany, Georgia. King was arrested twice during demonstrations organized by the  Albany Movement , but when he left jail and ultimately left Albany without achieving a victory, some movement activists began to question his militancy and his dominant role within the southern protest movement.

As King encountered increasingly fierce white opposition, he continued his movement away from theological abstractions toward more reassuring conceptions, rooted in African-American religious culture, of God as a constant source of support. He later wrote in his book of sermons,  Strength to Love  (1963), that the travails of movement leadership caused him to abandon the notion of God as “theologically and philosophically satisfying” and caused him to view God as “a living reality that has been validated in the experiences of everyday life” ( Papers  5:424 ). 

During 1963, however, King reasserted his preeminence within the African-American freedom struggle through his leadership of the  Birmingham Campaign . Initiated by SCLC and its affiliate, the  Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights , the Birmingham demonstrations were the most massive civil rights protests that had yet occurred. With the assistance of Fred Shuttlesworth and other local black leaders, and with little competition from SNCC and other civil rights groups, SCLC officials were able to orchestrate the Birmingham protests to achieve maximum national impact. King’s decision to intentionally allow himself to be arrested for leading a demonstration on 12 April prodded the Kennedy administration to intervene in the escalating protests. The widely quoted “ Letter from Birmingham Jail ” displayed his distinctive ability to influence public opinion by appropriating ideas from the Bible, the Constitution, and other canonical texts. During May, televised pictures of police using dogs and fire hoses against young demonstrators generated a national outcry against white segregationist officials in Birmingham. The brutality of Birmingham officials and the refusal of Alabama’s governor George C.  Wallace  to allow the admission of black students at the University of Alabama prompted President Kennedy to introduce major civil rights legislation.

King’s speech  at the 28 August 1963  March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom , attended by more than 200,000 people, was the culmination of a wave of civil rights protest activity that extended even to northern cities. In his prepared remarks, King announced that African Americans wished to cash the “promissory note” signified in the egalitarian rhetoric of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Closing his address with extemporaneous remarks, he insisted that he had not lost hope: “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 ... 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.’” He appropriated the familiar words of “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” before concluding, “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!’” (King, “I Have a Dream”).

Although there was much elation after the March on Washington, less than a month later, the movement was shocked by another act of senseless violence. On 15 September 1963, a dynamite blast at Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church killed four young school girls. King delivered the eulogy for three of the four girls, reflecting: “They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers” (King,  Eulogy for the Martyred Children ).

St. Augustine, Florida  became the site of the next major confrontation of the civil rights movement. Beginning in 1963, Robert B.  Hayling , of the local NAACP, had led sit-ins against segregated businesses. SCLC was called in to help in May 1964, suffering the arrest of King and Abernathy. After a few court victories, SCLC left when a biracial committee was formed; however, local residents continued to suffer violence.

King’s ability to focus national attention on orchestrated confrontations with racist authorities, combined with his oration at the 1963 March on Washington, made him the most influential African-American spokesperson of the first half of the 1960s. He was named  Time  magazine’s “Man of the Year”  at the end of 1963, and was awarded the  Nobel Peace Prize  in December 1964. The acclaim King received strengthened his stature among civil rights leaders but also prompted  Federal Bureau of Investigation  (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover to step up his effort to damage King’s reputation. Hoover, with the approval of President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert  Kennedy , established phone taps and bugs. Hoover and many other observers of the southern struggle saw King as controlling events, but he was actually a moderating force within an increasingly diverse black militancy of the mid-1960s. Although he was not personally involved in  Freedom Summer  (1964), he was called upon to attempt to persuade the  Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party  delegates to accept a compromise at the Democratic Party National Convention.

As the African-American struggle expanded from desegregation protests to mass movements seeking economic and political gains in the North as well as the South, King’s active involvement was limited to a few highly publicized civil rights campaigns, such as Birmingham and St. Augustine, which secured popular support for the passage of national civil rights legislation, particularly the  Civil Rights Act of 1964 .

The Alabama protests reached a turning point on 7 March 1965, when state police attacked a group of demonstrators at the start of a march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery. Carrying out Governor Wallace’s orders, the police used tear gas and clubs to turn back the marchers after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma. Unprepared for the violent confrontation, King alienated some activists when he decided to postpone the continuation of the  Selma to Montgomery March  until he had received court approval, but the march, which finally secured federal court approval, attracted several thousand civil rights sympathizers, black and white, from all regions of the nation. On 25 March, King addressed the arriving marchers from the steps of the capitol in Montgomery. The march and the subsequent killing of a white participant, Viola Liuzzo, as well as the earlier murder of James  Reeb  dramatized the denial of black voting rights and spurred passage during the following summer of the  Voting Rights Act of 1965 .

After the march in Alabama, King was unable to garner similar support for his effort to confront the problems of northern urban blacks. Early in 1966 he, together with local activist Al  Raby , launched a major campaign against poverty and other urban problems, and King moved his family into an apartment in Chicago’s black ghetto. As King shifted the focus of his activities to the North, however, he discovered that the tactics used in the South were not as effective elsewhere. He encountered formidable opposition from Mayor Richard Daley and was unable to mobilize Chicago’s economically and ideologically diverse black community. King was stoned by angry whites in the Chicago suburb of Cicero when he led a march against racial discrimination in housing. Despite numerous mass protests, the  Chicago Campaign  resulted in no significant gains and undermined King’s reputation as an effective civil rights leader.

King’s influence was damaged further by the increasingly caustic tone of black militancy in the period after 1965. Black radicals increasingly turned away from the Gandhian precepts of King toward the  black nationalism  of  Malcolm X , whose posthumously published autobiography and speeches reached large audiences after his assassination in February 1965. Unable to influence the black insurgencies that occurred in many urban areas, King refused to abandon his firmly rooted beliefs about racial integration and nonviolence. He was nevertheless unpersuaded by black nationalist calls for racial uplift and institutional development in black communities. 

In June 1966, James  Meredith  was shot while attempting a “March against Fear” in Mississippi. King, Floyd  McKissick  of the  Congress of Racial Equality , and Stokely  Carmichael  of SNCC decided to continue his march. During the march, the activists from SNCC decided to test a new slogan that they had been using,  Black Power . King objected to the use of the term, but the media took the opportunity to expose the disagreements among protesters and publicized the term.

In his last book,  Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?  (1967), King dismissed the claim of Black Power advocates “to be the most revolutionary wing of the social revolution taking place in the United States,” but he acknowledged that they responded to a psychological need among African Americans he had not previously addressed (King,  Where Do We Go , 45–46). “Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery,” King wrote. “The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation” (King, “Where Do We Go From Here?”).

Indeed, even as his popularity declined, King spoke out strongly against American involvement in the  Vietnam War , making his position public in an address, “ Beyond Vietnam ,” on 4 April 1967, at New York’s Riverside Church. King’s involvement in the anti-war movement reduced his ability to influence national racial policies and made him a target of further FBI investigations. Nevertheless, he became ever more insistent that his version of Gandhian nonviolence and social gospel Christianity was the most appropriate response to the problems of black Americans.

In December 1967, King announced the formation of the  Poor People’s Campaign , designed to prod the federal government to strengthen its antipoverty efforts. King and other SCLC workers began to recruit poor people and antipoverty activists to come to Washington, D.C., to lobby on behalf of improved antipoverty programs. This effort was in its early stages when King became involved in the  Memphis sanitation workers’ strike  in Tennessee. On 28 March 1968, as King led thousands of sanitation workers and sympathizers on a march through downtown Memphis, black youngsters began throwing rocks and looting stores. This outbreak of violence led to extensive press criticisms of King’s entire antipoverty strategy. King returned to Memphis for the last time in early April.  Addressing  an audience at Bishop Charles J. Mason Temple on 3 April, King affirmed his optimism despite the “difficult days” that lay ahead. “But it really doesn’t matter with me now,” he declared, “because I’ve been to the mountaintop.... and I’ve seen the Promised Land.” He continued, “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land,” (King, “ I’ve Been to the Mountaintop ”). The following evening, the  assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. , took place as he stood on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. A white segregationist, James Earl Ray, was later convicted of the crime. The Poor People’s Campaign continued for a few months after King’s death, under the direction of Ralph Abernathy, the new SCLC president, but it did not achieve its objectives.

Until his death, King remained steadfast in his commitment to the transformation of American society through nonviolent activism. In his posthumously published essay, “A Testament of Hope” (1969), he urged African Americans to refrain from violence but also warned: “White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society.” The “black revolution” was more than a civil rights movement, he insisted. “It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism” (King, “Testament,” 194).

After her husband’s death, Coretta Scott King established the Atlanta-based Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change (also known as the  King Center ) to promote Gandhian-Kingian concepts of nonviolent struggle. She also led the successful effort to honor her husband with a federally mandated  King national holiday , which was first celebrated in 1986. 

Introduction, in  Papers  1:1–57 .

King, “An Autobiography of Religious Development,” 12 September 1950–22 November 1950, in  Papers  1:359–363 .

King, Eulogy for the Martyred Children, 18 September 1963, in  A Call to Conscience , ed. Carson and Shepard, 2001.

King, “I Have a Dream,” Address Delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 28 August 1963, in  A Call to Conscience , ed. Carson and Shepard, 2001.

King, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” Address Delivered at Bishop Charles Mason Temple, 3 April 1968, in  A Call to Conscience , ed. Carson and Shepard, 2001.

King, “Kick Up Dust,” Letter to the Editor,  Atlanta Constitution , 6 August 1946, in  Papers  1:121 .

King, “My Trip to the Land of Gandhi,” July 1959, in  Papers  5:231–238 .

King, “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” 13 April 1960, in  Papers  5:419–425 .

King, Remarks Delivered at Africa Freedom Dinner at Atlanta University, 13 May 1959, in  Papers  5:203–204 .

King,  Strength to Love , 1963.

King, “A Testament of Hope,” in  Playboy  (16 January 1969): 193–194, 231–236.

King, “Where Do We Go From Here?,” Address Delivered at the Eleventh Annual SCLC Convention, 16 August 1967, in  A Call to Conscience , ed. Carson and Shepard, 2001.

King,  Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? , 1967.

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April 3, 1968

Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his last speech, supporting more than 1,300 sanitation workers striking in Memphis to protest their poor working conditions and wages. 

More than 2,000 came to hear him speak. He shared the story of the Good Samaritan, where religious leaders passed by a wounded man instead of aiding him: “The question is not, ‘If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?’ ‘If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?’ That’s the question.” 

As a storm raged, he told the crowd that “the masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya: Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee – the cry is always the same — ‘We want to be free.’” 

He talked of his brush with death when a woman stabbed him and talked of threats against him now. 

“We’ve got some difficult days ahead,” he told the crowd. “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.” 

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by Jerry Mitchell, Mississippi Today April 3, 2024

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The stories of investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell have helped put four Klansmen and a serial killer behind bars. His stories have also helped free two people from death row, exposed injustices and corruption, prompting investigations and reforms as well as the firings of boards and officials. He is a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a longtime member of Investigative Reporters & Editors, and a winner of more than 30 other national awards, including a $500,000 MacArthur “genius” grant. After working for three decades for the statewide Clarion-Ledger, Mitchell left in 2019 and founded the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting.

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This Day In History : April 16

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Martin Luther King Jr. writes “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

On April 16, 1963, days after being jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, for a series of anti-segregation protests, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pens a response to his critics on some scraps of paper. This open letter, now known as his “ Letter from a Birmingham Jail ,” offered a forceful defense of the protest campaign. It is now regarded as one of the greatest texts of the American civil rights movement .

First circulated as a mimeographed copy around Birmingham, King's letter was later published in numerous places. It appeared as a pamphlet from the American Friends Service Committee, and in publication as diverse as Ebony , Christian Century and The New York Post . Part of it was introduced into The Congressional Record as part of testimony by New York Congressman William Fitts Ryan. And King revised it as a chapter of his 1964 memoir Why We Can't Wait.

The letter was addressed to eight white “Fellow Clergymen” who had criticized the protest campaign in a joint statement published on April 13 in the Birmingham News . King first dispensed with the idea that he, as a preacher from Atlanta was too much of an “outsider” to confront bigotry in Birmingham, saying, “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

While stressing the importance of non-violence , King rejected the idea that his movement was acting too fast or too dramatically: “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was ‘well timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation.” King also advocated for violating unjust laws and urged that believers in organized religion “[break] loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity.”

All told, the lengthy letter constituted a defense of nonviolent protest, a call to push the issue of civil rights, and a rallying cry for fence-sitters to join the fight, even if it meant that they, too, might end up in jail.

The Birmingham campaign succeeded in drawing national attention to the horrors of segregation. After the United Auto Workers paid King’s $160,000 bail, he was released from jail on April 20. Four months later, he stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and gave his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, regarded by many as the pinnacle of his movement.

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Hitler calls for last stand on the Eastern front

Western gunslinger, bat masterson, fights in last shootout, hollywood legend charlie chaplin born, fertilizer explosion kills 581 in texas, bernard baruch popularizes the term “cold war”, arthur chevrolet dies by suicide, lenin returns to russia from exile.

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. think of America 56 years after his assassination?

“All of the healers have been killed or betrayed.” – Gil Scott-Heron, “ Winter in America ”

By 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was flailing. Like W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, and others he had been abandoned by many leaders of the NAACP and other Black legacy organizations. He was still hounded by the U.S. government as J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO continued efforts to destroy Black leaders and resistance to racial inequality. He was struggling to hold together his own coalition of lieutenants like Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, Hosea Williams and others, who all quickly went their separate ways after King’s death.

King hadn’t had a major victory in years and his popularity had plummeted. As he neared death, almost 75% of Americans disapproved of him , labeling him a race-baiting troublemaker. Painfully for him, even a majority of Black people didn’t support him. Those closest to King wondered how he could go on as he tumbled into depression.

The immediate past provided no encouragement in 1968. Medgar Evers had been shot to death in his Jackson, Mississippi driveway in June 1963. King’s simultaneous rival and comrade Malcolm X was murdered just over a year and a half later in New York. The Black Power Movement had been born a few years earlier and its leaders were already targeted, persecuted and, at times, marked for death.

More Ricky Jones: Yes, Black athletes should disrupt March Madness in defense of diversity. They won’t.

W.E.B. DuBois , one Black America’s greatest intellectuals, had given up 7 years earlier. He wrote to his friend Grace Goens in September of 1961, “I just cannot take any more of this country’s treatment. Chin up, and fight on, but realize that American Negroes can’t win.” DuBois left for Ghana the next month and never returned. He died the day before the 1963 March on Washington , a mere two months after Evers.

King’s 13 years on the frontlines of America’s Civil Rights War ended when he was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. He was only 39 years old.

King did not live to see racist anti-Black politicians and pundits misuse his words arguing people should “not be judged by the color of their skin, but the content of their character” to oppose Black progress. He did not live to see the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for which he fought for so fiercely weaponized by the U.S. Supreme Court and attorneys general like Kentucky’s Russell Coleman to justify the legal destruction of affirmative action, diversity initiatives, and set the fight for racial equality back decades. King did not live to see the Voting Rights of 1965 of which he was so proud gutted and rendered little more than a “dead letter” by the Shelby County v. Holder ruling in 2013. Since then, racial voting disparities in America have increased exponentially.        

King was a brave man born out of the Black radical tradition

King did not live to see cowardly Black free-riders (not Freedom Riders) who will not open their mouths in defense of their people benefit from his sacrifice and suffering. He did not live long enough to see the Ward Connerlys, Clarence Thomases , Candace Owens and Daniel Camerons of the world. He didn’t live to see Tim Scott skinning, grinning, and genuflecting before Donald Trump as he bastardized the words of Fannie Lou Hamer. He did not live long enough to see a Black man running for governor of North Carolina proudly proclaim that Black people owe America reparations . Nor did King live long enough to see a Black president or the unrelenting white backlash that has followed him.

Listen up, Louisville. Mattie Jones has advice for today's racial justice leaders.

The searing truth-telling writer James Baldwin didn’t see most of it either. He outlived King by 21 years, eventually dying in 1987 during the racial onslaught of the Reagan era. He was only 63. For those decades, Baldwin was the one left behind. He lived long enough to bear witness to the grief, pain, and white retribution that followed his friends’ murders. What Baldwin saw was neither pretty nor encouraging. He damningly reflects on America in Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary I am not your Negro, “I’m terrified at the moral apathy – the death of the heart which is happening in my country. These people have deluded themselves for so long that they really don’t think I’m human. I base this on their conduct, not on what they say. And this means that they have become, in themselves, moral monsters.” 

Current political and social anti-Blackness has grown more and more brazen in America and, unfortunately, there are no Kings or Baldwins left to fight it. What would Baldwin, King, and their fellow warriors think of America today? The “Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute’s Baldwin-King Project,” which I founded, will wrestle with that question on the 56 th anniversary of King’s death on Thursday, April 4 th at Roots 101 African American Museum in Louisville, Kentucky at 5 pm. We hope you will join us! I encourage you to REGISTER FOR THIS FREE EVENT HERE.

Dr. Ricky L. Jones is the Baldwin-King Scholar-in-Residence at the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute and Professor of Pan-African Studies, University of Louisville. His column appears bi-weekly in the Courier-Journal. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, and X.

Martin Luther King III honors his father's legacy: 'This nation must come together'

The son of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the National Civil Rights Museum Thursday on the 56th anniversary of his father's assassination.

Standing at the exact point where King was shot on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King III honored his father's legacy and lamented the connection that was taken from him.

"The loss of a parent can be transformative," King said, visibly emotional. It was his first time speaking at the annual event in Memphis. "At the age of 10 years old, I didn't get to have adult conversations with my father. He did not see me graduate from high school, or his beloved Morehouse College. He didn't get to meet my wife and our daughter."

King spoke during the "Remembering MLK: The Man. The Movement. The Moment.", a free public event organized by the National Civil Rights Museum to honor the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Hundreds congregated Thursday on the Memphis museum's courtyard.

Beyond his own personal loss, King spoke of the progress he believed the nation lost as well.

"Had my father lived, we would be on a totally different trajectory," he said. "We may have some issues to address, but they wouldn't be these. These have been repetitive, we keep going 'round and 'round."

King continued, addressing many problems he said the country and the world face today: warfare, a flawed democracy, a broken justice system and systemic poverty, to name a few. But ultimately, the central message he spoke echoed that of his father — one of unity and non-violence.

"This nation must come together, to live out the true promises of who it says it is," King said. "In life, we must decide whether we're... going to go along to get along, or whether we're going to create the climate for change and justice and righteousness and peace. We as human beings can do that. History has shown us that time and time again."

King's wife, Arndrea Waters King, also spoke during Thursday's event. Like her husband, she reaffirmed that Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream did not die with him.

"Here we are today. In some ways it seems even farther from [King's] dream," she said. "But what we know as a family, and why we decided to be here today, as difficult as it is, for us to stand here, is that there is something that man cannot ever destroy. And that love, faith and vision that lived inside of Martin Luther King Jr. now lives inside each and every one of us.

"He did not make it all the way to the mountaintop. But he ignited a vision and a dream, and now in 2024 it is up to each one of us to do our part... History is not about collective guilt. It's about collective responsibility."

Various city and state political leaders could be seen at the ceremony. Memphis Mayor Paul Young and Tennessee state Sen. Raumesh Akbari gave brief opening statements. State Rep. Justin Pearson, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy and the parents of Tyre Nichols, RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, attended as well.

The ceremony was interspersed with performances from the W. Crimm Singers of Tennessee State University, music from gospel singer Deborah Manning Thomas, and audio from the many speeches King gave over his lifetime. Members of King's fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, presented their own wreath to honor their brother. Winners of the museum's Youth Poetry and Spoken Word Competition performed as well.

The event closed, as it does every year, with the exchanging of the balcony wreath, during a moment of silence at 6:01 p.m., the exact time when King was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. As the Kings and others lowered the massive wreath onto its resting place moments later, audio of King's final speech, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," rang out in an otherwise respectfully silent crowd.

Though it was a difficult day for Martin Luther King III, he ended his speech on a hopeful note, referencing the James Cleveland song "I Don't Feel Noways Tired."

"Do not get noways tired as the song says," King said. "Because we've come too far from where we started. No one ever told any of use that our roads would be easy. But I know our God... didn't bring any of us this far to leave us."

Jacob Wilt is a reporter for The Commercial Appeal. You can reach him at [email protected] .

GOP nominee for NC governor failed to file federal income taxes for 5 years

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has been open about some of his past financial challenges, including nonpayment of debts and failure to pay rents.

He's also, throughout his political rise, railed against the social safety net and disparaged those who have relied on government assistance, while on his way to clinching the Republican gubernatorial nomination in the state.

And while Robinson has previously talked about his financial issues, bankruptcy records obtained by ABC News paint a more dire and detailed picture of his financial and business history than has previously been disclosed -- including new details regarding how the potential future governor had failed to file his federal income taxes for five consecutive years starting in 1998.

In his 2022 autobiography "We Are The Majority," Robinson wrote that his wife decided to open a daycare center in 2000 and that "by God's grace, it became extremely successful." Robinson was "blessed to start, run, and sell a successful small business with his wife," according to the lieutenant governor's office website.

As the daycare grew, according to the book, Robinson would go on to leave his job working at an aviation company and stop taking college classes, in order to work on the surging business full-time. "Soon she was no longer able to operate the business out of our home and moved to a freestanding building," Robinson wrote of his wife.

In the book, Robinson, who became North Carolina's first Black lieutenant governor in 2020, described the business as "running well" and said that "we paid our bills on time," while also noting it was a "tough business to keep afloat." The book, however, fails to mention Robinson filing for bankruptcy a few years after opening the daycare.

'Precious Beginnings'

According to the United States Bankruptcy Court, Middle District of North Carolina, Mark and Yolanda Robinson, doing business as Precious Beginnings, filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy on January 8, 2003. Robinson had previously filed for bankruptcy on two other occasions in 1998 and 1999.

In seeking bankruptcy protection, the Robinson family described a series of grave economic circumstances. According to their 2003 filing, the family faced the repossession of two vehicles and the impending foreclosure of their Greensboro home. The records also show that, at the time, Robinson had just $70 to his name -- $40 in cash and $30 in savings -- as well as $4,720 in personal property. They also reported debts surpassing $1 million, including $290,525 in unsecured debts and $871,550 in secured debts.

Robinson, according to the documents, had also failed to file income taxes for five years. After filing for bankruptcy in 2003, the Internal Revenue Service filed a motion for the Bankruptcy Court to compel Robinson to file taxes for the years 1998-2002.

"The United States of America, by its counsel, the United States Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina, respectfully moves the Bankruptcy Court for an order compelling debtor Mark Keith Robinson to furnish to the Internal Revenue Service individual income tax returns for the taxable years 1998, 1999, 2000, 20001, and 2002 or, in the alternative, for an order dismissing this case with prejudice," the motion reads. "Due to Mr. Robinson's failure to file federal individual income tax returns for those years, the Internal Revenue Service is unable to file an accurate proof of claim and to determine whether he is remaining current with respect to unpaid taxes."

Robinson ultimately filed his back taxes in May 2003.

In October 2003, the Robinsons lost their Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection due to the "failure of the debtors to comply with the requirements of the plan," according to the records.

In a statement to ABC News, Robinson's campaign communications director Mike Lonergan said, "This is old news recycled by the Democrats and their allies in the press to distract the voters."

"Lt. Governor Robinson has made no secret about the financial challenges in his past," the statement said. "As a former factory worker who lost his job due to NAFTA and had his home foreclosed and was even forced into bankruptcy, the Lt. Governor has overcome many challenges -- financial and others -- in his past. He's lived the struggles that families across North Carolina are facing every day. North Carolinians are ready for a governor who will be focused on solutions to their problems -- not another career politician climbing the ladder from office to office."

Robinson has previously faced questions about his taxes. When he was confronted in 2022 about having hundreds of dollars in delinquent Guilford County vehicle tax bills, Robinson initially suggested that his wife handled their taxes, according to WRAL-TV News in Raleigh.

"When you start talking about taxes, if I'm the guy doing them, somebody's going to jail," Robinson said. "I'm not very good at math."

Robinson ultimately said in a statement to WRAL News that he was unaware of the vehicle taxes owed and that he "paid them immediately."

'The death in this country of responsibility'

In his book, Robinson described some of his family's early financial challenges, including how their first home was foreclosed on.

"We failed in some ways. That's the house that we lost, that was repossessed," he wrote. "After that, it seemed like we got shoved into the wilderness. We had been wasting money and time. I wasted a lot of time. We learned more during the period after we lost the house than when we were in the house. We had a better time in the house. But we learned more after."

He wrote that everybody in politics has made mistakes of some sort.

"So many people are discouraged from running for office because they have made mistakes in their lives. They have declared bankruptcy. They have cheated on their spouse. They were in jail one time. They used to do drugs or drink," Robinson wrote. "I've been looking for people who have made no mistakes. I haven't found any. Truth be told, when you go to Washington, D.C., you will find people who have done even worse."

Yet despite relying on protection from the bankruptcy courts during his early days of financial troubles, Robinson's political rise has coincided with his railing against the social safety net while calling on citizens to take responsibility for their financial situation.

"The war on poverty was started and waged to win votes. It was a pandering ploy by the Democratic Party to gain the votes of poor people," Robinson said on the Anomic Age Podcast in 2019. "The very first person you should look to to take care of yourself should be you, and it's caused, really, the death in this country of responsibility."

"We don't have a charity problem in this country. There are plenty of places where charity is available," he said. "The problem is we have people that have been abusing the system for far too long. And too many of these social programs have degraded our work ethic."

"If you're not responsible with your finances, you don't pay your bills on time, you're not going to be able to have the freedom to do things other folks do. You won't have the freedom to be able to buy the kind of house you want, or car you want to buy. If you're not responsible when it comes to law and order, you're going to eventually lose your freedom," Robinson said. "And you see in everything that these Democrats now are pushing, they're taking the responsibility out of it."

In Facebook posts in 2020, as Democrats were pushing for student loan forgiveness plans, Robinson railed against the idea, writing, "So since we're talking about canceling 'student debt' I've got some 'parent debt' to cancel too. You know, stuff like a mortgage and auto loans."

'Better than Martin Luther King'

Robinson exploded onto the political scene thanks to a viral 2018 pro-gun rights speech he gave following the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. But he has faced widespread criticism over past comments.

CNN previously reported that Robinson had mocked and attacked the teenage survivors of the Parkland shooting, including by writing on Facebook that the students were "spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN" and "media prosti-tots."

The Republican gubernatorial nominee has also faced criticism from members of his own party, including North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, who endorsed Robinson's opponent in the gubernatorial primary.

"Mark Robinson's a good enough guy ... but he has virtually no legislative experience, very little business experience," Tillis said.

Robinson, however, has received a glowing endorsement from former President Donald Trump, who has described Robinson as "Martin Luther King on steroids."

"I think you're better than Martin Luther King. I think you are Martin Luther King times two," Trump said while endorsing Robinson last month.

ABC News' Peter Charalambous contributed to this report.

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Martin Luther King Jr’s family to visit Memphis on anniversary of his murder

The relatives of slain civil rights leader will visit Tennessee city to bring attention to erosion of civil rights in US

Relatives of the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr are making a rare trip to Memphis on Thursday on the anniversary of his assassination, to speak on the rising threat of political violence, especially in an election year.

Martin Luther King III, the eldest son of the late King, will pay tribute to his father’s legacy, 56 years after the assassination in the Tennessee city.

King was shot and killed in 1968 as he stood on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in downtown Memphis.

On Thursday, King III will host a public celebration of of his father’s life and activism at the historic National Civil Rights Museum, which is located near the Lorraine motel, the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported .

The event will end with a moment of silence, marking the time when King was killed.

Relatives of King do not generally make the pilgrimage to Memphis, and certainly not as a family unit, but have said they felt it was necessary to do so during a presidential election year in which the US is so divided and violent rhetoric is becoming routine, chiefly from the far right.

“This is the first year that we actually are going back as a family to Memphis, and we felt that it was extraordinarily important to be there in that spot this year,” King III’s wife, Arndrea Waters King, said to Axios .

King III told Axios that his family was growing concerned at the lack of civility in politics.

“We believe we have to go into difficult areas, to use our platform, to use our voice to lift up what we believe is good, just and right. And so we’re willing to make a sacrifice,” King III said, adding that the family was determined to visit Memphis in spite of its painful associations.

Arndrea Waters King added that the latest commemoration of King’s legacy and untimely death comes as civil rights in the US are eroding .

“We feel that in some ways there’s a backward movement from the dream,” she said to Memphis Magazine .

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“Laws are being passed where our daughter – Dr King’s only grandchild – has fewer rights now at 16 than the day that she was born,” she added, referring to her daughter, 15-year-old Yolanda Renee King.

In recent years, the supreme court has rolled back federal abortion protections and affirmative action , which promoted greater student diversity at US colleges and universities.

King III has also spoken out against attacks on voting rights, especially as the US Senate failed to pass meaningful voting rights legislation in 2022 and the supreme court further eroded protections.

“We’re gonna continue to push to get something done. Because to me, it’s fundamental to the foundation of our democracy. It’s those on the other side who seem to have lost the perception of what democracy is,” King III said of voting rights in a 2022 interview.

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