Here is the video of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream Speech” along with photos and transcript.  King delivered the famous speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 at the March on Washington which drew 250,000 people in support of Civil Rights legislation and an end to segregation, 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 brought about the end of slavery in the U.S.

In a recent book, King’s Dream UCLA professor Eric J. Sundquist, has examined the King speech in depth, and as Michael Kenney notes in a review….

Toward the end of the afternoon came King, already hailed as the soul of the civil rights movement, and a year later to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. King had a fine speech in hand, a masterpiece of oratory that called on themes from the Old Testament prophets to Abraham Lincoln. But just a paragraph from his prepared ending, King stopped in midsentence and paused.

As Eric J. Sundquist speculates in “King’s Dream,” it was as if King realized that something was missing, that, despite the continued shouts of approval, “he had not yet truly connected with his audience.” When King resumed, it was to utter, spontaneously, the memorable words: “I have a dream. . .” [...]

1963 March on Washington

As for that powerful “dream” imagery itself, Sundquist writes, “Dreams of freedom were omnipresent” for civil rights activists. King himself had used it earlier that summer at a Walk for Freedom in Detroit, and it could be found in the music of the Everly Brothers and Roy Orbison, in the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois, the civil rights pioneer who had died just the day before. [...]

In the book’s concluding chapter, “Not by the Color of Their Skin,” Sundquist explores the political interpretation of a key passage: “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.” “Those thirty-five spontaneous words,” Sundquist writes, have been crucial in “[framing] public discussion of affirmative action over the past four decades.” They have been used as such by Ronald Reagan, by supporters of California’s Proposition 209, which barred “preferential treatment,” and, perhaps most remarkably, by Clarence Thomas, before his appointment to the US Supreme Court, in arguing for an “equality of rights.”

Source: Exploring origins of ‘King’s Dream’  See also: King’s Dream – First chapter

Here is the full 17 minute I Have a Dream speech video.




YouTube Video Link

Here is the I Have a Dream speech text.

For more texts of King’s speeches, see: A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.

For more Martin Luther King Jr. pictures, see the Life Magazine archive on Google which contains 200 photos (including rare color photos from the 1963 March on Washington)

King’s birthday is January 15, 1929.  Had he lived he would have turned 80 this year.  The Martin Luther King holiday is celebrated on the third Monday of January, which this year falls on January 19, just one day before the historic Inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the U.S., the nation’s first black president. Obama delivered his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention on August 28, 2008, exactly 40 years to the day after King’s 1963 speech.

In 1994, Congress charged the Corporation for National and Community Service with transforming the King Holiday into a national day of service. This year, President-elect Obama is asking all Americans to serve on King Day and make an ongoing commitment throughout the year.(Source: MLKDay.gov)

Photo source: United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Related posts:

• Martin Luther King, Jr. Remembered on the 40th Anniversary of His Assassination
• Video & Photos: Barack Obama Acceptance Speech Democratic National Convention 2008 8-28-08
• Video: Barack Obama Martin Luther King Jr. Mashup – Obama + MLK Remix 08
• Obama Concert Video, Photos: We Are One Inaugural Celebration Lincoln Memorial
• Video & Photos: Barack Obama Acceptance Speech Presidential Victory 11-4-08
• Obama Evokes RFK in Speech on MLK Assassination 40th Anniversary (Video)

Martin Luther King, Jr. with President Lyndon B. Johnson

Martin Luther King Jr I Have a Dream Speech Video, Text, Photos