Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" Speech

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968

"I Have a Dream" is a seventeen minute speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in which he called for racial equality and an end to discrimination. King's delivery of the speech on August 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement. Delivered to over a quarter million civil rights supporters, the speech was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address. According to U.S. Representative John Lewis, who also spoke that day as the President of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, "Dr. King had the power, the ability, and the capacity to transform those steps on the Lincoln Memorial into a monumental area that will forever be recognized. By speaking the way he did, he educated, he inspired, he informed not just the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations."

At the end of the speech, King departed from his prepared text for a partly improvised peroration on the theme of "I have a dream", possibly prompted by Mahalia Jackson's cry, "Tell them about the dream, Martin!" 

*According to Wikipedia.

1963 March on Washington Fun Facts

• Official name, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
• It took place in Washington DC, on Wednesday, August 28, 1963, starting at The Washington Monument and ended at The Lincoln Memorial
• At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington, DC history
• The march was initiated by A. Philip Randolph 
• It took place on the 100th Anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation
• Josephine Baker was the only female speaker.
• The leaders of the march asked for:
• $2 minimum wage for all workers
• the end of segregation in public schools
• protection of civil rights workers from police brutality
• self government for Washington, DC (at the time it was governed by Congress)
• The march facilitated the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964