I Have a Dream by Martin Luther King
Commentary on Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I Have a Dream” Speech (1963)
On August 28, 1963, nearly a quarter of million people arrived in the District of Columbia for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In the midst of the days various events and speeches, one stood out: Martin Luther King, Jr’s speech “ I Have a Dream”. It is a political text in which he called for racial equality and an end to the discrimination. His oration eclipsed the remarks of all other speakers that day and it is among the most quoted American public addresses. According to the U.S. Representative John Lewis, who also spoke that day as the President of the Student Nonviolent 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, and he informed not just the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations. “I Have a Dream” has come to symbolise the aspirations of the modern civil rights movement. "The son, the grandson, and the great grandson of preachers," as he so tactfully reminded the clergymen addressed in "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. Educated at Morehouse College and at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, he was ordained a Baptist minister in his father's church at 18. In 1955, he completed a doctorate in systematic theology at Boston University. That December, he called a citywide boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, where he had been serving as pastor of a church for over a year. From then until his death in Memphis in 1968, King travelled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest and action. Meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham,
On August 28, 1963, nearly a quarter of million people arrived in the District of Columbia for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In the midst of the days various events and speeches, one stood out: Martin Luther King, Jr’s speech “ I Have a Dream”. It is a political text in which he called for racial equality and an end to the discrimination. His oration eclipsed the remarks of all other speakers that day and it is among the most quoted American public addresses. According to the U.S. Representative John Lewis, who also spoke that day as the President of the Student Nonviolent 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, and he informed not just the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations. “I Have a Dream” has come to symbolise the aspirations of the modern civil rights movement. "The son, the grandson, and the great grandson of preachers," as he so tactfully reminded the clergymen addressed in "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. Educated at Morehouse College and at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, he was ordained a Baptist minister in his father's church at 18. In 1955, he completed a doctorate in systematic theology at Boston University. That December, he called a citywide boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, where he had been serving as pastor of a church for over a year. From then until his death in Memphis in 1968, King travelled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest and action. Meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham,