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M.L. KING'S "I HAVE A DREAM" SPEECH - 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 Proclaimation.  This

momentous decree came as a great beacon of hope to millions of

slaves, who had been seared in the flames of whithering

injustice.  It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of

their captivity.  But one hundered 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 Anerican 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 it the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of

segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.



Now it the time to lift our nation from the quicksands 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 selfhood 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 dispair.  I say to you, my

friends, we have the difficulties of today and tommorrow.



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 symphomy 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

tenement 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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Prepared by Gerald Murphy (The Cleveland Free-Net - aa300)

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