Martin Luther King, Jr. I Have A Dream Speech

Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro* institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family

In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

[audience applause]

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.

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.

[audience cheering and applause]

I have a dream

that one day on the red hills of Georgia

the sons of former slaves and

the sons of former slave owners,

will be able to sit down together

at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream

that one day

even the state of Mississippi,

a state sweltering with the heat of

injustice,

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 the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

[applause]

I have a dream that one day

down in Alabama with its vicious racists,

with its governor having his lips dripping

with the words of interposition
and nullification.

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.

[cheering and applause]

I have dream that one day every valley

shall be exalted and 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, and 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.

And this will be the 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 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.

And 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

snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the

curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that.

Let freedom ring

from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from

Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill

and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens,

and 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!

[cheering and applause]