I Have a Dream

Speech by Martin Luther King Jr.

Delivered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

August 28, 1963

In the late afternoon of a warm summer day, hundreds of thousands of weary and wistful people had gathered in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. They had come from all over the United States, from the Deep South to the Far North, from the rural South to the urban North. They had come to hear a message of hope and a call to action. And they had come to witness a historic moment in the struggle for civil rights.

Martin Luther King Jr., the leader of the Civil Rights Movement, stood before them, a microphone in hand. He was a young man, with a gentle demeanor and a powerful message. He began his speech with a call to the nation’s conscience:

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 outcast in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an unacceptable condition. We have come to say to the nation, “We cannot be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

In his speech, Dr. King spoke of his dream for America, a dream that would transcend the barriers of race and discrimination:

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.

He also spoke of the struggle that lay ahead and the need for unity and perseverance:

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.

He concluded his speech with a powerful and inspiring call to action:

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 hills of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountains of Georgia!

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!”

This powerful speech, delivered on August 28, 1963, remains one of the most iconic and influential speeches in American history. It encapsulated the hopes and dreams of a nation, and it galvanized the Civil Rights Movement, leading to significant legislative changes and advancements in the fight for racial equality.