When Did Martin Luther King Jr. Give His Famous "I Have A Dream" Speech? | eNotes When Did Martin Luther King Jr. Give His Famous "I Have A Dream" Speech? peter183 | Student, Undergraduate | (Level 1) eNoter Posted on October 23, 2012 at 3:09 AM "i have a dream" is a 17-minute public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered on August 28, 1963, in which he called for racial equality and an end to discrimination. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement. Delivered to over 200,000 civil rights supporters, the speech was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century like 6 dislike 0 October 10, 2011 at 4:00 PM Civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) gave his "I Have a Dream" speech on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington.

The march drew more than a quarter million people lobbying for congressional passage of a civil rights bill. They gathered around the Lincoln Memorial to hear the speakers. When King spoke, he effectively defined the Civil Rights movement and the struggle for justice with these famous lines: "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'." Congress (the law-making body of the United States) passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. This was the most comprehensive piece of American civil rights legislation since the Reconstruction (1856–77; a twelve-year period of rebuilding that followed the Civil War). It outlawed racial discrimination in public places, assured equal voting standards for all citizens, prohibited employer and union racial discrimination, and called for equality in education. Further Information: "Comprehensive MLK Sites." MLK Links. [Online] Available , November 1, 2000; King, Martin Luther Jr., and James Melvin Washington. I Have a Dream. San Francisco: Harper, 1992; "Martin Luther King, Jr." Seattletimes.com.

[Online] Available , November 1, 2000. Source: UXL History Fact Finder, ©2001 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright . like 6 dislike 1 The I Have a Dream Speech - The U.S. Constitution Online - USConstitution.net The I Have a Dream Speech Advertisement In 1950's America, the equality of man envisioned by the Declaration of Independence was far from a reality. People of color — blacks, Hispanics, Asians — were discriminated against in many ways, both overt and covert. The 1950's were a turbulent time in America, when racial barriers began to come down due to Supreme Court decisions, like Brown v. Board of Education; and due to an increase in the activism of blacks, fighting for equal rights. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister, was a driving force in the push for racial equality in the 1950's and the 1960's. In 1963, King and his staff focused on Birmingham, Alabama.

They marched and protested non-violently, raising the ire of local officials who sicced water cannon and police dogs on the marchers, whose ranks included teenagers and children. The bad publicity and break-down of business forced the white leaders of Birmingham to concede to some anti-segregation demands. Thrust into the national spotlight in Birmingham, where he was arrested and jailed, King helped organize a massive march on Washington, DC, on August 28, 1963. His partners in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom included other religious leaders, labor leaders, and black organizers. The assembled masses marched down the Washington Mall from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, heard songs from Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, and heard speeches by actor Charlton Heston, NAACP president Roy Wilkins, and future U.S. Representative from Georgia John Lewis. King's appearance was the last of the event; the closing speech was carried live on major television networks. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King evoked the name of Lincoln in his "I Have a Dream" speech, which is credited with mobilizing supporters of desegregation and prompted the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The next year, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The following is the exact text of the spoken speech, transcribed from recordings. 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 light of hope to millions of Negro 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 Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro 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 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 the unalienable 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 the Negro people a bad check, a check which 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 the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no 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 promises 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 for all of God's children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro'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 Negro 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 Negro 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. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. 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 Negro'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 selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "For Whites Only". We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro 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 great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution 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 northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, 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." 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.

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 there 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 exalted, 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. 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.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a 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. 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 snowcapped 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, when we allow freedom to 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!" Martin Luther King: the story behind his 'I have a dream' speech | US news | The Guardian Martin Luther King Martin Luther King: the story behind his 'I have a dream' speech It's 50 years since King gave that speech. Gary Younge finds out how it made history (and how it nearly fell flat) Washington DC, 1963, Martin Luther King reaches the climax of his speech.

Photograph: © Bob Adelman/Magnum Friday 9 August 2013 16.00 EDT First published on Friday 9 August 2013 16.00 EDT Share on Messenger Close The night before the March on Washington , on 28 August 1963, Martin Luther King asked his aides for advice about the next day's speech. "Don't use the lines about 'I have a dream', his adviser Wyatt Walker told him. "It's trite, it's cliche. You've used it too many times already." King had indeed employed the refrain several times before. It had featured in an address just a week earlier at a fundraiser in Chicago, and a few months before that at a huge rally in Detroit. As with most of his speeches, both had been well received, but neither had been regarded as momentous. This speech had to be different. While King was by now a national political figure, relatively few outside the black church and the civil rights movement had heard him give a full address. With all three television networks offering live coverage of the march for jobs and freedom, this would be his oratorical introduction to the nation.

After a wide range of conflicting suggestions from his staff, King left the lobby at the Willard hotel in DC to put the final touches to a speech he hoped would be received, in his words, "like the Gettysburg address". "I am now going upstairs to my room to counsel with my Lord," he told them. "I will see you all tomorrow." King with his adviser Wyatt Walker, who urged: ‘Don’t use the lines about “I have a dream”. It’s cliche.’ Photograph: Tom Self/Birmingham News/Polaris/Eyevine A few floors below King's suite, Walker made himself available. King would call down and tell him what he wanted to say; Walker would write something he hoped worked, then head up the stairs to present it to King. "When it came to my speech drafts," wrote Clarence Jones, who had already penned the first draft, "[King] often acted like an interior designer. I would deliver four strong walls and he would use his God-given abilities to furnish the place so it felt like home." King finished the outline at about midnight and then wrote a draft in longhand. One of his aides who went to King's suite that night saw words crossed out three or four times.

He thought it looked as though King were writing poetry. King went to sleep at about 4am, giving the text to his aides to print and distribute. The "I have a dream" section was not in it. A few hours after King went to sleep, the march's organiser, Bayard Rustin, wandered on to the Washington Mall, where the demonstration would take place later that day, with some of his assistants, to find security personnel and journalists outnumbering demonstrators. Political marches in Washington are now commonplace, but in 1963 attempting to stage a march of this size in that place was unprecedented. The movement had high hopes for a large turnout and originally set a goal of 100,000. From the reservations on coaches and trains alone, they guessed they should be at least close to that figure. But when the morning came, that expectation did little to calm their nerves. Reporters badgered Rustin about the ramifications for both the event and the movement if the crowd turned out to be smaller than anticipated. Rustin, forever theatrical, took a round pocket watch from his trousers and some paper from his jacket.

Examining first the paper and then the watch, he turned to the reporters and said: "Everything is right on schedule." The piece of paper was blank. The first official Freedom Train arrived at Washington's Union station from Pittsburgh at 8.02am, records Charles Euchner in Nobody Turn Me Around. Within a couple of hours, thousands were pouring through the stations every five minutes, while almost two buses a minute rolled into DC from across the country. About 250,000 people showed up that day. The Washington Mall was awash with Hollywood celebrities, including Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis Jr, Burt Lancaster, James Garner and Harry Belafonte. Marlon Brando wandered around brandishing an electric cattle prod, a symbol of police brutality. Josephine Baker made it over from France. Paul Newman mingled with the crowd. The March on Washington. Photograph: © Leonard Freed/Magnum Photos It was a hectic morning for King, paying a courtesy visit with other march leaders to politicians at the Capitol, but he still found time to fiddle with the speech. When he eventually walked to the podium, the typed final version was once more full of crossings out and scribbles.

Rustin had limited the speakers to just five minutes each, and threatened to come on with a crook and haul them from the podium when their time was up. But they all overran and, given the heat – 87F at noon – and humidity, the crowd's mood began to wane. Weary from a night's travel, many were anxious to make good time on the journey back and had already left. King was 16th on an official programme that included the national anthem, the invocation, a prayer, a tribute to women, two sets of songs and nine other speakers. Only the benediction and the pledge came after. Portions of the crowd had moved off to seek respite from the heat under the trees on the Mall while others dipped their feet in the reflecting pool. Those most eager for a view of the podium braved the sun under the shade of their umbrellas. "There was… an air of subtle depression, of wistful apathy which existed in many," wrote Norman Mailer. "One felt a little of the muted disappointment which attacks a crowd in the seventh inning of a very important baseball game when the score has gone 11-3.

The home team is ahead, but the tension is broken: one's concern is no longer noble." But if they were exhausted, they were no less excited. Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson had lifted spirits with I've Been 'Buked and I've Been Scorned. Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress, followed, recalling his time as a rabbi in Berlin under Hitler: "A great people who had created a great civilisation had become a nation of silent onlookers. They remained silent in the face of hate, in the face of brutality and in the face of mass murder," he said. "America must not become a nation of onlookers. America must not remain silent." King was next. The area around the mic was crowded with speakers, dignitaries and their entourages. Wearing a black suit, black tie and white shirt, King edged through the melee towards the podium. "I tell students today, 'There were no jumbotrons [large screen TVs] back then,' " says Rachelle Horowitz, the young activist who organised transport to the march. "All people could see was a speck.

And they listened to it." King started slowly, and stuck close to his prepared text. "I thought it was a good speech," recalled John Lewis, the leader of the student wing of the movement, who had addressed the march earlier that day. "But it was not nearly as powerful as many I had heard him make. As he moved towards his final words, it seemed that he, too, could sense that he was falling short. He hadn't locked into that power he so often found." King was winding up what would have been a well-received but, by his standards, fairly unremarkable oration. "Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana," he said. Then, behind him, Mahalia Jackson cried out: "Tell 'em about the dream, Martin." Jackson had a particularly intimate emotional relationship with King, who when he felt down would call her for some "gospel musical therapy". "She was his favourite gospel singer, and he would ask her to sing The Old Rugged Cross or Jesus Met The Woman At The Well down the phone," Jones explains. Jackson had seen him deliver the dream refrain in Detroit in June and clearly it had moved her.

"Go back to the slums and ghettoes of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed," King said. Jackson shouted again: "Tell 'em about the dream." "Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends." Then King grabbed the podium and set his prepared text to his left. "When he was reading from his text, he stood like a lecturer," Jones says. "But from the moment he set that text aside, he took on the stance of a Baptist preacher." Jones turned to the person standing next to him and said: "Those people don't know it, but they're about to go to church." A smattering of applause filled a pause more pregnant than most. "So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream." "Aw, shit," Walker said. "He's using the dream." Crowds in front of the Washington Monument at the March on Washington. Photograph: © Bruce Davidson /Magnum Photos For all King's careful preparation, the part of the speech that went on to enter the history books was added extemporaneously while he was standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, speaking in full flight to the crowd.

"I know that on the eve of his speech it was not in his mind to revisit the dream," Jones insists. It is open to debate just how spontaneous the insertion of the "I have a dream" section was (Euchner says a guest in the adjacent hotel room to King heard him rehearsing the segment the night before), but the two things we know for sure are that it was not in the prepared text and it wasn't invented on the spot. King had been using the refrain for well over a year. Talking some months later of his decision to include the passage, King said: "I started out reading the speech, and I read it down to a point. The audience response was wonderful that day… And all of a sudden this thing came to me that… I'd used many times before… 'I have a dream.' And I just felt that I wanted to use it here… I used it, and at that point I just turned aside from the manuscript altogether.

I didn't come back to it." "Though [King] was extremely well known before he stepped up to the lectern," Jones wrote, "he had stepped down on the other side of history." Watching the whole thing on TV in the White House, President John F Kennedy, who had never heard an entire King speech before, remarked: "He's damned good. Damned good." Almost everyone, including even King's enemies, recognised the speech's reach and resonance. William Sullivan, the FBI's assistant director of domestic intelligence, recommended: "We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous negro of the future of this nation." A few in the crowd were unimpressed. Anne Moody, a black activist who had made the trip from rural Mississippi, recalled: "I sat on the grass and listened to the speakers, to discover we had 'dreamers' instead of leaders leading us. Just about every one of them stood up there dreaming. Martin Luther King went on and on talking about his dream. I sat there thinking that in Canton we never had time to sleep, much less dream." But most were ebullient.

"It would be like if, right now in the Arab spring, somebody made a speech that was 15 minutes long that summarised what this whole period of social change was all about," one of King's most trusted aides, Andrew Young, told me. "The country was in more turmoil than it had been in since before the second world war. People didn't understand it. And he explained it. It wasn't a black speech. It wasn't just a Christian speech. It was an all-American speech." Fifty years on, the speech enjoys both national and global acclaim . A 1999 survey conducted by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Texas A&M University , of 137 leading scholars of public address, named it the greatest speech of the 20th century. During the protests in Tiananmen Square, China, some protesters held up posters of King saying "I have a dream". On the wall that Israel has built around parts of the West Bank, someone has written "I have a dream. This is not part of that dream." The phrase "I have a dream" has been spotted in such disparate places as a train in Budapest and on a mural in suburban Sydney.

Asked in 2008 whether they thought the speech was "relevant to people of your generation", 68% of Americans said yes, including 76% of blacks and 67% of whites. Only 4% were not familiar with it. But few of those in the movement thought at the time that it would be the speech by which King would be remembered 50 years later. "Rustin always said that King's genius was that he could simultaneously talk to a black audience about why they needed to achieve their freedom and address a white audience about why they should support that freedom," recalls Horowitz. "Simultaneously. It was a genius that he could do that as one Gestalt… King's was the poetry that made the march immortal. He capped off the day perfectly. He did what everybody wanted him to do and expected him to do. But I don't think anybody predicted at the time that the speech would do what it did since." Their bemusement was justified. For if, in its immediate aftermath, the speech had any significant political impact, it was not obvious.

"At the time of King's death in April 1968 , his speech at the March on Washington had nearly vanished from public view," writes Drew Hansen in his book about the speech, The Dream. "There was no reason to believe that King's speech would one day come to be seen as a defining moment for his career and for the civil rights movement as a whole… King's speech at the march is almost never mentioned during the monumental debates over the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which occupy around 64,000 pages of the Congressional record." History does not objectively sift through speeches, pick out the best on their merits and then dedicate them faithfully to public memory. It commits itself to the task with great prejudice and fickle appreciation, in a manner that tells us as much about the historian and the times as the speech itself. The speech was marginalised because, in the last few years of his life, King himself was marginalised, and few who had the power to elevate his speech to iconic status had any self-interest in doing so. His growing propensity to take on issues of poverty, followed by his opposition to the Vietnam war, lost him the support of the political class and much of his white and more conservative base.

King's speech at the March on Washington offers a positive prognosis on the apparently chronic American ailment of racism. As such, it is a rare thing to find in almost any culture or nation: an optimistic oration about race that acknowledges the desperate circumstances that made it necessary while still projecting hope, patriotism, humanism and militancy. In the age of Obama and the Tea Party, there is something in there for everyone. It speaks, in the vernacular of the black church, with clarity and conviction to African Americans' historical plight and looks forward to a time when that plight will be eliminated ("We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating 'for whites only'. No, no, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream"). Its nod to all that is sacred in American political culture, from the founding fathers to the American dream, makes it patriotic ("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.'").

It sets bigotry against colour-blindness while prescribing no route map for how we get from one to the other. ("I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists… little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.") But the breadth of its appeal is to some extent at the expense of depth. It is in no small part so widely admired because the interpretations of what King was saying vary so widely. Polls show that while African Americans and American whites both agree about the extent to which "the dream has been realised", they profoundly disagree on the state of contemporary race relations. The recent acquittal of George Zimmerman over the shooting of the black teenager Trayvon Martin illustrates the degree to which blacks and whites are less likely to see the same problems, more likely to disagree on the causes of those problems and, therefore, unlikely to agree on a remedy. Hearing the same speech, they understand different things. Conservatives, meanwhile, have been keen to co-opt both King and the speech.

I n 2010, Tea Party favourite Glenn Beck held the "Restoring Honour" rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th anniversary of the speech, telling a crowd of about 90,000: "The man who stood down on those stairs… gave his life for everyone's right to have a dream." Almost a year later, black republican presidential candidate Herman Cain opened his speech to the southern Republican leadership conference with the words, "I have a dream." Their embrace of the speech has made some black intellectuals and activists wary. They fear that the speech can too easily be distorted in a manner that undermines the speaker's legacy. "In the light of the determined misuse of King's rhetoric, a modest proposal appears in order," Georgetown university professor Michael Dyson wrote in 2001. "A 10-year moratorium on listening to or reading 'I Have a Dream'." At first blush, such a proposal seems absurd and counter- productive. After all, King's words have convinced many Americans that racial justice should be aggressively pursued.

The sad truth is, however, that our political climate has eroded the real point of King's beautiful words." These responses tell us at least as much about now as then, perhaps more. The 50th anniversary of "I have a dream" arrives at a time when the president is black, whites are destined to become a minority in the US in little more than a generation, and civil rights-era protections are being dismantled. Segregationists have all but disappeared, even if segregation as a lived experience has not. Racism, however, remains. Fifty years on, it is clear that in eliminating legal segregation – not racism, but formal, codified discrimination – the civil rights movement delivered the last moral victory in America for which there is still a consensus. While the struggle to defeat it was bitter and divisive, nobody today is seriously campaigning for the return of segregation or openly mourning its demise. The speech's appeal lies in the fact that, whatever the interpretation, it remains the most eloquent, poetic, unapologetic and public articulation of that victory.

• • Adapted from The Speech: The Story Behind Martin Luther King's Dream, by Gary Younge, published on 22 August by Guardian Books at £6.99. To order a copy for £5.59, including mainland UK p&p, go to theguardian.com/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846. Obama marked the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech with a stirring speech on inequality Published: 28 Aug 2013 US president urges crowd to follow Martin Luther King's inspiration to combat racism and take action over minority rights Published: 28 Aug 2013 Martin Luther King's Most Famous Speech  MLK Scavenger Hunt On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" Speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. In this historic speech, King said he had a dream that white and black children would one day walk hand in hand and that one day sons of former slaves and sons of former slaveowners would be able to agree to live together.

The 1950s, 1960s and 1970s were tremendously difficult times for African-Americans. They were not treated like white Americans simply because of their skin color. And the laws protected the bad treatment they got. Laws requiring "separate" hotels, restaurants, schools, and even drinking fountains were common in many states. Martin Luther King was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement, a drive to get more equal treatment for all Americans, not just white Americans. This speech was important in several ways: It brought even greater attention to the Civil Rights Movement, which had been going on for many years. King's speech was part of the March on Washington, a gathering of more than 250,000 people in the nation's capital. African-Americans still were not treated as equals. Marches like this one and ones earlier in Detroit and other cities called attention to this fact. The speech was given in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, the monument honoring President Abraham Lincoln, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in the Southern states.

By giving his speech there, King was wanting to call attention to how things were so terrible a century before (during the Civil War) and how some things hadn't changed so very much in 100 years. It brought Martin Luther King and his message of non-violence to a nationwide (and worldwide) audience. The speech was carried on radio and was reprinted in newspapers and magazines all over the United States and all over the world. After this speech, the name Martin Luther King was known to many more people than before. It made Congress move faster in passing the Civil Rights Act. This set of laws was finally passed the next year, in 1964. Many of these laws gave African-Americans more equal treatment than they ever had before. Martin Luther King continued to speak out for civil rights and for nonviolence. Sadly, he was killed in 1968. But the memory of his famous "I Have a Dream" speech and the message it contains live on.

Graphics courtesy of ArtToday March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom On 28 August 1963, more than 200,000 demonstrators took part in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in the nation’s capital. The march was successful in pressuring the administration of John F. Kennedy to initiate a strong federal civil rights bill in Congress. During this event, Martin Luther King delivered his memorable ‘‘I Have a Dream’’ speech. The 1963 March on Washington had several precedents. In the summer of 1941 A. Philip Randolph , founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, called for a march on Washington, D. C., to draw attention to the exclusion of African Americans from positions in the national defense industry. This job market had proven to be closed to blacks, despite the fact that it was growing to supply materials to the Allies in World War II. The threat of 100,000 marchers in Washington, D.C., pushed President Franklin D.

Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802, which mandated the formation of the Fair Employment Practices Commission to investigate racial discrimination charges against defense ﬁrms. In response, Randolph cancelled plans for the march. Civil rights demonstrators did assemble at the Lincoln Memorial in May 1957 for a Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom on the third anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education , and in October 1958, for a Youth March for Integrated Schools to protest the lack of progress since that ruling. King addressed the 1957 demonstration, but due to ill health after being stabbed by Izola Curry , Coretta Scott King delivered his sched¬uled remarks at the 1958 event. By 1963, the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation , most of the goals of these earlier protests still had not been realized. High levels of black unemployment, work that offered most African Americans only minimal wages and poor job mobility, systematic disenfranchisement of many African Americans, and the persistence of racial segrgation in the South prompted discussions about a large scale march for political and economic justice as early as 1962.

On behalf of the Negro American Labor Council (NALC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Randolph wrote a letter on 24 May 1962 to Secretary Stewart Udall of the Department of the Interior regarding permits for a march culminating at the Lincoln Memorial that fall. Plans for the march were stalled when Udall encouraged the groups to consider the Sylvan Theater at the Washington Monument due to the complications of rerouting trafﬁc and the volume of tourists at the Lincoln Memorial. In March 1963 Randolph telegraphed King that the NALC had begun planning a June march ‘‘for Negro job rights,’’ and asked for King’s immediate response (Randolph, 26 March 1963).

In May, at the height of the Birmingham Campaign , King joined Randolph, James Farmer of CORE, and Charles McDew of SNCC in calling for such an action later that year, declaring, ‘‘Let the black laboring masses speak!’’ (King et al., 7 May 1963) After notifying President Kennedy of their intent, the leaders of the major civil rights organizations set the march date for 28 August. The stated goals of the protest included ‘‘a comprehensive civil rights bill’’ that would do away with segregated public accommodations; ‘‘protection of the right to vote’’; mechanisms for seeking redress of violations of constitutional rights; ‘‘desegregation of all public schools in 1963’’; a massive federal works program ‘‘to train and place unemployed workers’’; and ‘‘a Federal Fair Employment Practices Act barring discrimination in all employment’’ (‘‘Goals of Rights March’’).

As the summer passed, the list of organizations participating in and sponsoring the event expanded to include the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People , the National Urban League , the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice, the National Council of the Churches of Christ in America , the United Auto Workers (UAW), and many others. The March on Washington was not universally embraced. It was condemned by the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X who referred to it as ‘‘the Farce on Washington,’’ although he attended nonetheless (Malcolm X, 278). The executive board of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) declined to support the march, adopting a position of neutrality. Nevertheless, many constituent unions attended in substantial numbers. The diversity of those in attendance was reﬂected in the event’s speakers and performers.

They included singers Marian Anderson, Odetta, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan; Little Rock civil rights veteran Daisy Lee Bates ; actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee ; American Jewish Congress president Rabbi Joachim Prinz; Randolph; UAW president Walter Reuther ; march organizer Bayard Rustin ; NAACP president Roy Wilkins ; National Urban League president Whitney Young and SNCC leader John Lewis . A draft of John Lewis’ prepared speech, circulated before the march, was denounced by Reuther, Burke Marshall , and Patrick O’Boyle, the Catholic Archbishop of Washington, D.C., for its militant tone. In the speech’s original version Lewis charged that the Kennedy administration’s proposed Civil Rights Act was ‘‘too little and too late,’’ and threatened not only to march in Washington but to ‘‘march through the South, through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We will pursue our own ‘scorched earth’ policy’’ (Lewis, 221; 224).

In a caucus that included King, Randolph, and SNCC’s James Forman , Lewis agreed to eliminate those and other phrases, but believed that in its ﬁnal form his address ‘‘was still a strong speech, very strong’’ (Lewis, 227). The day’s high point came when King took the podium toward the end of the event, and moved the Lincoln Memorial audience and live television viewers with what has come to be known as his ‘‘I Have a Dream’’ speech. King commented that ‘‘as television beamed the image of this extraordinary gathering across the border oceans, everyone who believed in man’s capacity to better himself had a moment of inspiration and conﬁdence in the future of the human race,’’ and characterized the march as an ‘‘appropriate climax’’ to the summer’s events (King, ‘‘I Have a Dream,’’ 125; 122). After the march, King and other civil rights leaders met with President Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House, where they discussed the need for bipartisan support of civil rights legislation.

Though they were passed after Kennedy’s death, the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 reﬂect the demands of the march. SOURCES Branch, Parting the Waters, 1988. Carson, In Struggle, 1981 ‘‘Goals of Rights March,’’ New York Times, 29 August 1963. King, Address at youth march for integrated schools in Washington, D.C., Delivered by Coretta Scott King, 25 October 1958, in Papers 4:514–515. King, ‘‘Give Us the Ballot,’’ Address at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, 17 May 1957, in Papers 4:208–215. King, ‘‘I Have a Dream,’’ in A Call to Conscience, Carson and Shepard, eds., 2001. King, Why We Can’t Wait, 1964.

King, Randolph, Farmer, and McDew, Call for an Emancipation March on Washington for Jobs, 7 May 1963, BRP-DLC. Lewis, Walking with the Wind, 1998. Malcolm X with Haley, Autobiography of Malcolm X, 1965. Randolph to King, 26 March 1963, MLKJP-GAMK. Aide reveals Martin Luther King almost never said 'I have a dream' | Daily Mail Online comments It was the speech that forever changed the course of race relations in the United States, but according to Dr. Martin Luther King's right hand man, the words, 'I have a dream' were ad-libbed and almost not said on that bright sunny day in 1963. Clarence Jones was sitting 50 feet behind King when he delivered the speech and now, 50, years later, Jones recalls how the words 'I have a dream,' were not written in the text that King prepared and began to read that day.

Instead, King improvised on the spot, reviving a phrase he has used previously with little impact, according to Jones, King's lawyer, speechwriter and confidant. Scroll Down for Video Recollection: Clarence B. Jones who wrote speeches for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and attended the rally on August 28, 1963, where King gave his ground breaking speech remembers how different history could have been 'I have a dream,' King shouted to the crowd, his voice reverberating with emotion, 'that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.' Delivered 50 years ago on Wednesday, King's image of his dream for a better America still inspires the United States. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share The speech was delivered to more than 250,000 people who came to Washington, D.C., to march for civil rights at a time when it was still illegal for blacks and whites to marry in many states, and just months after protesters in Alabama were set upon with police dogs and fire hoses.

King had spoken before about having a dream for his children, and for America, but the phrase had never really resonated with an audience and the idea was left out of the text for that day's speech altogether, Jones said in an interview with Reuters near his home in Palo Alto. Historic: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, addresses marchers during his 'I Have a Dream' speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on August 28th, 1963 Watch Video Here: Defining Moment: Martin Luther King Jr. walks out to The Mall to deliver his iconic speech in August, 1963 In this combination of Associated Press file photos, at top, civil rights protestors march down Constitution Avenue carrying placards during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963; and at bottom, people rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the march on Saturday He also recounted the story in his most recent book, 'Behind the Dream,' which was published in 2011. King had prepared a text that started with several paragraphs of Jones' writing.

As King began to read it, Jones tracked the paragraphs as they went by. The first seven were as he had written them. One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed U.S. slaves, 'the life of the Negro is still badly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination,' King intoned. A Baptist preacher with a stirring and charismatic speaking style, King went on, reading parts of the text that he had added to the first few paragraphs by Jones. Then came the change in script. The gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who had earlier performed the song, 'How I Got Over,' yelled from the stands. 'Tell 'em about the dream, Martin,' she said, according to Jones. 'Tell 'em about the dream!' Jones said he could not see Jackson because she was sitting below him, but he heard her voice. He also saw King, who had been reading from the text in front of him, look up. King nodded to where Jackson was sitting, Jones said, adding he saw King take hold of the pages of his speech and move them to one side. Watch Video Here: Steadfast: Visitors walk at Martin Luther King, Jr.

Memorial after the march to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Saturday, August 24th A mass of demonstrators leaves the Washington Monument for the March on Washington on August 28th, 1963; and at right, people line the Reflecting Pool as they attend a rally to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1963 march on Saturday, August 24th, 2013, in Washington Memorial: People line the reflecting pool as they listen to speakers at a rally to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington on Saturday, August 24th, 2013, in Washington Crowds line the Reflecting Pool to watch the 50th anniversary ceremony of the 1963 March on Washington ceremony, with the Washington Monument in the backround, August 24th, 2013 'He moves the text of the speech to the left side of the lectern, grabs the lectern, looks out on those more than 250,000 people assembled and thereafter begins to speak completely spontaneously and ext

emporaneously,' Jones said.

'Everything thereafter was spontaneous,' he said. 'That was the 'I have a dream' speech.' From that moment on, King's cadence changed as sentences and ideas built on one another to reach powerful crescendos. 'I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood,' King said. '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.' Memories: Rev. Al Sharpton, left, and Martin Luther King III stand together during an event to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington at the Lincoln Memorial, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2013, in Washington People hold signs as they gather to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a Dream" speech on the National Mall on August 24th, 2013 in Washington, DC The top of the Washington Monument and part of a U.S. flag are reflected in the sunglasses of Austin Clinton Brown, 9, of Gainesville, Florida, during the March on Washington on August 28th, 1963; and at right, Claudia Hanes, from Kentucky, takes part in a rally to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1963 march, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Saturday, August 24th, 2013, right Jones, who is the author of two books about King, teaches at both Stanford University and the University of San Francisco. He was born in Philadelphia in 1931 and he met King in 1960, remaining close to him until King's assassination in 1968.

He said he believes a number of conditions that day helped make the moment historic: the beautiful weather; the presence of more than 250,000 people; a powerful speech that preceded King's by Joachim Prinz, then president of the American Jewish Congress; the location at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, and the centennial anniversary of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, which freed black slaves in the United States. Anger among black Americans was also at a tipping point, Jones said. Images of police dogs and fire hoses used against peaceful demonstrators, including children, at protests in Birmingham, Alabama, enraged African-Americans and shocked many around the world. 'You can't understand about the 'I have a dream' speech,' Jones said, 'unless you pause and reflect about the historical circumstances that were taking place in the country at that time.' And on Saturday, tens of thousands of people marched to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and down the National Mall on Saturday, commemorating the 50th anniversary of King's famous speech and pledging that his dream includes equality for gays, Latinos, the poor and the disabled.

Marchers hold signs during the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington August 24th, 2013 The Lincoln Memorial during sunrise early in the morning before the start of the ceremony honoring the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, August 24th, 2013 The Washington Memorial is lit in the early morning as people gather to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a Dream" speech on the National Mall on August 24th, 2013 in Washington, DC. The event was an homage to a generation of activists that endured fire hoses, police abuse and indignities to demand equality for African Americans. But there was a strong theme of unfinished business. 'This is not the time for nostalgic commemoration,' said Martin Luther King III, the oldest son of the slain civil rights leader. 'Nor is this the time for self-congratulatory celebration. The task is not done. The journey is not complete.

We can and we must do more.' Eric Holder, the nation's first black attorney general, said he would not be in office, nor would Barack Obama be president, without those who marched. 'They marched in spite of animosity, oppression and brutality because they believed in the greatness of what this nation could become and despaired of the founding promises not kept,' Holder said. Holder mentioned gays and Latinos, women and the disabled as those who had yet to fully realize the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream. Others in the crowd advocated organized labor, voting rights, revamping immigration policies and access to local post offices. Speakers included Rep. John Lewis, left, the only surviving speaker from the 1963 March and Martin Luther King III, the oldest son of the slain civil rights leader A man holds a sign depicting slain youth Trayvon Martin during the March on Washington rally Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., the only surviving speaker from the 1963 March on Washington, railed against a recent Supreme Court decision that effectively erased a key anti-discrimination provision of the Voting Rights Act. Lewis was a leader of a 1965 march, where police beat and gassed marchers who demanded access to voting booths.

'I gave a little blood on that bridge in Selma, Ala., for the right to vote,' he said. 'I am not going to stand by and let the Supreme Court take the right to vote away from us. You cannot stand by. You cannot sit down. You've got to stand up. Speak up, speak out and get in the way.' Organizers expected about 100,000 people to participate in the event, the precursor to the actual anniversary of the Aug. 28, 1963, march that drew some 250,000 to the National Mall and ushered in the idea of massive, nonviolent demonstrations. Marchers began arriving early Saturday, many staking out their spots as the sun rose in a clear sky over the Capitol. By midday, tens of thousands had gathered on the National Mall. Lynda Chambers, 58, gave up a day's pay to attend because her retail job does not provide paid vacation. Even as a 7-year-old at the time of the original march, she felt alienated and deprived of her rights. Remembering those feelings, she said, she was compelled to make the trip Saturday.

'I wanted to have some sort of connection to what I have always known, as far as being a black person,' she said. Students of Howard University march from campus to the Lincoln Memorial to participate in the Realize the Dream Rally Longtime activist Al Sharpton, now a MSNBC host, implored young black men to respect women and reminded them that two of the leading figures in the civil rights movement of the 1960s were women. 'Rosa Parks wasn't no ho,' he said. 'And Fannie Lou Hamer wasn't no bitch.' Speakers frequently mentioned persistent high unemployment among blacks, which is about twice that of white Americans, and the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida. Along the Mall, Martin's picture was nearly as ubiquitous as King's. Nancy Norman, of Seattle, said she was disappointed more people who look like her had not attended. She is white. But the 58-year-old she said she was glad to hear climate change discussed alongside voting rights. 'I'm the kind of person who thinks all of those things are interconnected. Climate change is at the top of my list,' Norman said.

'I don't think it's one we can set aside for any other discussion.' Those in attendance arrived in a post-9/11 Washington that was very different from the one civil rights leaders visited in 1963. Economic parity, equity in education, voting rights, health care access and criminal justice reform were all issues mentioned during the speeches Then, people crowded the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and could get close to King to hear his 'I Have a Dream' speech. Saturday's speakers were also on the memorial's steps, but metal barriers kept people away from the reflecting pool and only a small group of attendees was allowed near the memorial Saturday. There was a media area and VIP seating. Everyone else had been pushed back and watched and listened to the speeches on big-screen televisions. Police were stationed atop the Lincoln Memorial. After the speeches, marchers walked from there, past the King Memorial, then down the National Mall to the Washington Monument, a distance of just over a mile. On the day of the anniversary, President Barack Obama will speak from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. He will be joined by former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Churches and groups have been asked to ring bells at 3 p.m.

Wednesday, marking the exact time King spoke. Joseph Lowery, who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference along with King, urged the crowd to continue working for King's ideals. 'We've come to Washington to commemorate,' the 92-year-old civil rights leader said, 'and we're going home to agitate.' Revisiting Martin Luther King's 1963 Dream speech - Photos - The Big Picture - Boston.com Revisiting Martin Luther King's 1963 Dream speech As people gather today to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, we look at images from that event in 1963 and from tumultuous times during the civil rights movement. ï¿½King's pivotal speech addressing racism in this country was a crucial event in the history of civil rights and one that will always be remembered, not just on this milestone anniversary. -Leanne Burden Seidel ( 20 photos total ) US civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. waves from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to supporters on the Mall in Washington, DC, during the "March on Washington" on Aug. 28, 1963.

In 1963 King spoke in front of 250,000 people, explaining his wish for better relations between black and white Americans. His words were engraved on the steps of the monument where he spoke. (AFP/Getty Images) 2 Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, center in hat, joins white passengers on a city bus in Birmingham, Ala., six days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the buses must integrate on Dec. 26, 1956. Shuttlesworth boarded hours after a bomb exploded inside his Collegeville, Ala., house. (Robert Adams/The Birmingham News via Associated Press) # 6 Rev. Ralph Abernathy, left, and Martin Luther King, Jr. walk through a corridor of the city jail in Birmingham, Ala., where they were held for several hours following conviction on charges of parading without a permit. They posted bond of $2,500.

(Associated Press) # 7 Police and firefighters gather near a fire that razed several houses owned by black residents in Birmingham, Ala., on May 12, 1963, one block from a black motel which was bombed and the same distance from a church where civil rights demonstrations started. (Associated Press) # 9 Emergency workers and others stand around a large crater from a bomb which killed four black girls in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. on Sept. 15, 1963. The windows of the building across the street in the background were also blown out. (Associated Press) # 10 A memorial plaque at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. for Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins and Carole Robertson, the four girls killed in a bombing at the church in 1963. (The Birmingham News via Associated Press) # 11 Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. displays pictures of three civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman who were slain in Mississippi the summer before at a news conference in New York on Dec. 4., 1964.

He commended the FBI for its arrests in Mississippi in connection with the slayings. As the burgeoning civil rights movement gathered force in the 1960s, demonstrators were brutalized and killed, sometimes at the hands of law officers. Many slayings remain unsolved. But in some cases where local authorities failed to go after the attackers or all-white juries refused to convict, the federal government moved in with civil rights charges. (Associated Press) # 13 American president John F. Kennedy in the White House with leaders of the civil rights March on Washington (left to right) Whitney Young, Dr Martin Luther King (1929 - 1968), Rabbi Joachim Prinz, A. Philip Randolph, President Kennedy, Walter Reuther (1907 - 1970) and Roy Wilkins. Behind Reuther is Vice-President Lyndon Johnson. (Three Lions/Getty Images) # 14 Civil rights demonstrators gather at the Washington Monument grounds before noon, before marching to the Lincoln Memorial, seen in the far background at right, where the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom will end with a speech by Rev.

Martin Luther King Jr., now known as the "I Have A Dream" speech. (Associated Press) # 16 At top, civil rights protestors march down Constitution Avenue carrying placards during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963; and at bottom, people rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1963 march Saturday, Aug. 24, 2013. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. (Associated Press) # 17 Civil Rights leaders pose in the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Washington DC, August 28, 1963.

Pictured are, standing from left, director of the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice Matthew Ahmann, Rabbi Joachim Prinz (1902 - 1988), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) leader John Lewis, Protestant minister Eugene Carson Blake (1906 - 1985), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) leader Floyd McKissick (1922 - 1991), and labor union leader Walter Reuther (1907 - 1970); sitting from left, National Urban League executive director Whitney Young (1921 - 1971), unidentified, labor union leader A Philip Randolph (1889 - 1979), Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968), and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) leader Roy Wilkins (1901 - 1981). The march and rally provided the setting for the Dr. King iconic 'I Have a Dream' speech. (PhotoQuest/Getty Images) # 19 The Rev. Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, speaks to thousands during his "I Have a Dream" speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. Actor-singer Sammy Davis Jr. is at bottom right. (Associated Press) # 20 The statue of Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington, DC, as thousands of people gather to commemorate the 50th anniversary of The March on Washington. The March on Washington is best remembered for King's stirring vision of a United States free of inequality and prejudice, telecast live to a nation undergoing a phenomenal decade of soul-searching, crisis and change. (Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images) #

Question: At which Washington monument, in August 1963, did Martin Luther King deliver his historic "I have a dream" speech?
Answer: THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL