1929-1968 |
Martin Luther King's
"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."
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