Martin Luther King
1929-1968
"I HAVE A DREAM"
Aug. 28, 1963
I am happy to join with you today in
what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration
for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American,
in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the
Emancipation Proclamation.
This momentous decree came as a great
beacon of hope to millions of slaves, who had been seared
in the flames of withering injustice.
It came as a joyous daybreak to end
the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the colored
America is still not free.
One hundred years later, the life of
the colored American is still sadly crippled by the
manacle of segregation and the chains of discrimination.
One hundred years later, the colored
American lives on a lonely island of poverty in the
midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.
One hundred years later, the colored
American 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
a shameful condition.
In a sense we have come to our Nation's
Capital to cash a check.
When the architects of our great 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
to 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 its colored 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.
So we have 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 his hallowed spot
to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now.
This is not 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 promise
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 quick-sands of racial injustice to the solid
rock of brotherhood.
Now is the time to make justice a reality
to all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to
overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate
the determination of it's colored citizens.
This sweltering summer of the colored
people'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 colored Americans
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 colored citizen is granted his
citizenship rights.
The whirlwinds of revolt will continue
to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright
day of justice emerges.
We 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
colored person's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto
to a larger one.
We can never be satisfied as long as
our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed
of their dignity by signs stating "for white only."
We cannot be satisfied as long as a
colored person in Mississippi cannot vote and a colored
person 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 your trials and tribulations.
Some of you have come from areas where
your quest for freedom left you battered by storms of
persecutions and staggered by the winds of police brutality.
You have been the veterans of creative
suffering.
Continue to work with the faith that
unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to
Alabama, go back to South Carolina go back to Georgia,
go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos
of our modern cities, knowing that somehow this situation
can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of
despair.
I say to you, my friends, we have the
difficulties of today and tomorrow.
I still have a dream.
It is a dream deeply rooted in the
American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation
will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.
We hold these truths to be self-evident
that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day out in
the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and
the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down
together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the
state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat
of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of
freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little
children will one day live in a nation where they will
not be judged by the color of their skin but by their
character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in
Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor
having his lips dripping with the words of interpostion
and nullification; that one day right down in Alabama
little black boys and black girls will be able to join
hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters
and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley
shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every
mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be
made plains and the crooked places will be made straight
and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all
flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope.
This is the faith that I will go back
to the South with.
With this faith we will be able to
hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.
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 climb up for freedom together,
knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's
children will be able to sing with new meaning "My
country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee
I sing.
Land where my father's 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 hilltops
of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains
of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening
Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped
Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvacious
slopes of California.
But not only that, let freedom, ring
from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from every hill and
molehill of Mississippi and every mountainside.
When we let freedom ring,
when we let it ring from every tenament 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 spiritual,
"Free at last, free at last.
Thank God Almighty, we are free at
last."
QUOTES BY DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR
We will have to repent in this generation not merely
for the hateful words and actions of the bad people
but for the appalling silence of the good people.
We must build dikes of courage to hold back the
flood of fear.
Occasionally in life there are those moments of
unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained
by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only
be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.
We must combine the toughness of the serpent with
the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender
heart.
That old law about "an eye for an eye"
leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to
do the right thing.
