50 years anniversary of Keeping the Dream Alive
50 years ago, a vision filled speech was unleashed to transform the Black and Blessed Race
I have a dream !!!
What you might not know about the speech .....
"I have a dream this afternoon that my four little children will not come up in the same young days that I came up within, but they will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not the color of their skin."
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke these words in 1963.
King spoke these words in Detroit, two months before he addressed a crowd of nearly 250,000 with his resounding "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs on August 28, 1963.
Several of King's staff members actually tried to discourage him from using the same "I have a dream" refrain again.
As we all know, that didn't happen. But how this pivotal speech was crafted is just one of several interesting facts about what is one of the most important moments in the 20th century in the United States:
MLK's speech almost didn't include "I have a dream"
King had suggested the familiar "Dream" speech that he used in Detroit for his address at the march, but his adviser the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker called it "hackneyed and trite."
So, the night before the march, King's staff crafted a new speech, "Normalcy Never Again."
King was the last speaker to address the crowd in Washington that day. As he spoke, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson called out to King, "Tell 'em about the dream, Martin."
Then he paused and said, "I still have a dream."
Walker was out in the audience. "I said, 'Oh, s---.'"
"I thought it was a mistake to use that," Walker recalled. "But how wrong I was. It had never been used on a world stage before."
The rest, of course, is history.
Other Ten facts about the speech
50 years ago, a vision filled speech was unleashed to transform the Black and Blessed Race
I have a dream !!!
What you might not know about the speech .....
"I have a dream this afternoon that my four little children will not come up in the same young days that I came up within, but they will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not the color of their skin."
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke these words in 1963.
King spoke these words in Detroit, two months before he addressed a crowd of nearly 250,000 with his resounding "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs on August 28, 1963.
Several of King's staff members actually tried to discourage him from using the same "I have a dream" refrain again.
As we all know, that didn't happen. But how this pivotal speech was crafted is just one of several interesting facts about what is one of the most important moments in the 20th century in the United States:
MLK's speech almost didn't include "I have a dream"
King had suggested the familiar "Dream" speech that he used in Detroit for his address at the march, but his adviser the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker called it "hackneyed and trite."
So, the night before the march, King's staff crafted a new speech, "Normalcy Never Again."
King was the last speaker to address the crowd in Washington that day. As he spoke, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson called out to King, "Tell 'em about the dream, Martin."
Then he paused and said, "I still have a dream."
Walker was out in the audience. "I said, 'Oh, s---.'"
"I thought it was a mistake to use that," Walker recalled. "But how wrong I was. It had never been used on a world stage before."
The rest, of course, is history.
Other Ten facts about the speech
click here to continue...
1) The speech is known as “I Have a Dream” but those words were never in the original draft, they were ad libbed on the day.
2) It lasts 17 minutes and is widely considered to have been drafted in New York and then in Washington in the hours before the rally.
3) As a result of the speech, Dr King was named Man of the Year by Time Magazine in 1963, and won the Nobel Peace Prize the following year.
4) Dr King drew his references from a wide variety of sources, including the Bible, the US Declaration of Independence and Shakespeare.
5) The speech was watched by more than 200,000 people assembled for the March on Washington, the largest march of the civil rights movement, as well as millions on television.
6) According to his co-authors, Dr King was so busy with the march that, 12 hours before the speech, he still did not have a firm idea about what he was going to say.
7) It was ranked the top speech of the 20th Century by a poll of academics.
It is said to have had several names and drafts, including “The normalcy speech” and “A Cancelled check”.
9) Dr King was the subject of one of the Irish band U2’s most famous songs, Pride (In the Name of Love).
10) Describing watching the oration, his co-author Clarence B Jones said the speech “went on to depart drastically from the draft I'd delivered”, adding: “In front of all those people, cameras, and microphones, Martin winged it.”
Credits CNN & The Telegraph
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