
Forty-six years ago today, the morning dawned as a cloudy Wednesday in Washington D.C. And forty-six years ago today, in front of a quarter of a million people gathered between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, a man from Alabama delivered a thunderbolt of a speech that largely defined the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.
In late 1962, various civil rights leaders began planning for what would become the largest civil rights march in the history of the United States. Their goal was to call atten-tion to the poverty, and degradation to which African Americans were subjected and to mobilize support for, as the name they gave their event said, jobs and freedom.
By June 1963, the organizers’ plans for a massive march on the nation’s capital were in place. They had successfully recruited a wide range of civil rights, religious and labor leader and activists, Martin Luther King, Jr., among them, to lead and speak at the rally.
In the days leading up to August 28th, people poured into Washington. On the day itself, more than 2,000 buses, 21 special trains, 10 chartered airliners and a vast multitude of automobiles converged on the city. In addition, all of the regularly scheduled airline flights, trains, and buses going into the nation’s capital were filled to capacity.
Nevertheless, at 8:00 am, only fifty people had showed up at the Washington Monument where the march was to start. Two hours late, there was a much larger crowd, but the leaders were still not present, as they were meeting with a congressional delegation. Those assembled started marching to the Lincoln Memorial without them. By the time King wrapped up the activities for the day (his speech was the last on the program,) though, more than 250,000 people had gathered, making this the largest civil rights event in the nation’s history.
King started giving another speech, but in mid stride, changed his mind and delivered, with minor variations, a speech he had given before. It galvanized the nation. ABC and NBC interrupted their regular programming to deliver it live to the nation.
You can listen to this masterpiece of rhetoric and experience the thrill and gooseflesh of that day almost a half a century ago by clicking here.
This speech always moves me. As we look back on that Wednesday more than four and a half decades ago, I hope it moves us again. We’ve come a long ways since then, but there is still a long ways to go before we can, to paraphrase Dr. King:
“…see the day when all of God’s children, black people and white people,
Gays and lesbians and transgendered people, Jews and Gentiles, Muslims
and Hindus, Catholics and Protestants, People of all religious beliefs and
unbeliefs 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!
Visit the Stanford University King Institute's King Resources site for a plethora of resources.
Two excellent books on the topic in the library are:
The Dream by Drew D. Hansen and The Preacher King by Richard Lischer
Additionally, consider this list of materials on the "I Have a Dream" Speech.
MAP