![]() ![]() Kennedy - had heard him deliver an entire speech. The speech impressed the Kennedy administration and helped advance civil rights legislation in Congress.Īll three major TV networks at the time (ABC, CBS and NBC) aired King’s speech, and though he was already a national figure by that time, it marked the first time many Americans - reportedly including President John F. The image of “this sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent” echoes the opening soliloquy in William Shakespeare’s Richard III (“Now is the winter of our discontent”), while the soaring end of the speech, with its repeated refrains of “Let freedom ring” calls on the 19th-century patriotic song "My Country 'Tis of Thee," written by Samuel Francis Smith.įinally, King’s speech repeatedly draws on the Bible, including an allusion to the Book of Psalms (“Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning”) and a quote from the Book of Isaiah (“Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low.”), to name just two references. After 100 years, King noted, “the Negro is still not free,” and the rights promised in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were still denied to Black Americans. “Five score years ago,” King began, referencing the opening of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as well as the Emancipation Proclamation, which had gone into effect in 1863. The speech makes allusions to the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. But as he spoke that day, the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson prompted him to “Tell them about the dream, Martin.” Abandoning his prepared text, King improvised the rest of his speech, with electrifying results. His advisers discouraged him from using the same theme again, and he had apparently drafted a version of the speech that didn’t include it. King had debuted the phrase “I have a dream” in his speeches at least nine months before the March on Washington, and used it several times since then. King almost didn’t deliver what is now the most famous part of the speech. “America must not become a nation of onlookers. “A great people who had created a great civilization had become a nation of silent onlookers,” Prinz said of his experience as a rabbi in Berlin during the horrors perpetrated by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. Joachim Prinz, the president of the American Jewish Congress, spoke directly before King. The UAW helped fund the March on Washington, and Reuther would later march alongside King from Selma to Montgomery to protest for Black voting rights. ![]() The most prominent white speaker was Walter Reuther, head of the United Automobile Workers, a powerful labor union. Philip Randolph and a young John Lewis, the future congressman from Georgia. King was preceded by nine other speakers, notably including civil rights leaders like A. A white labor leader and a rabbi were among the 10 speakers on stage that day. “This we pledge to the women of America.” 2. “We will sit-in and we will kneel-in and we will lie-in if necessary until every Negro in America can vote,” Bates said. Bates spoke briefly in the place of Myrlie Evers, widow of the murdered civil rights leader Medgar Evers, and Parks and several others were recognized and asked to take a bow. But at the urging of Anna Hedgeman, the only woman on the planning committee, the organizers added a “Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom” to the program. There were initially no women included in the event.ĭespite the central role that women like Rosa Parks, Ella Baker, Daisy Bates and others played in the civil rights movement, all the speakers at the March on Washington were men. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech now stands out as one of the 20th century’s most unforgettable moments, but a few facts about it may still surprise you. ![]()
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