what is the famous speech of martin luther king

A Summary and Analysis of Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘I Have a Dream’ is one of the greatest speeches in American history. Delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-68) in Washington D.C. in 1963, the speech is a powerful rallying cry for racial equality and for a fairer and equal world in which African Americans will be as free as white Americans.

If you’ve ever stayed up till the small hours working on a presentation you’re due to give the next day, tearing your hair out as you try to find the right words, you can take solace in the fact that as great an orator as Martin Luther King did the same with one of the most memorable speeches ever delivered.

He reportedly stayed up until 4am the night before he was due to give his ‘I Have a Dream’, writing it out in longhand. You can read the speech in full here .

‘I Have a Dream’: background

The occasion for King’s speech was the march on Washington , which saw some 210,000 African American men, women, and children gather at the Washington Monument in August 1963, before marching to the Lincoln Memorial.

They were marching for several reasons, including jobs (many of them were out of work), but the main reason was freedom: King and many other Civil Rights leaders sought to remove segregation of black and white Americans and to ensure black Americans were treated the same as white Americans.

1963 was the centenary of the Emancipation Proclamation , in which then US President Abraham Lincoln (1809-65) had freed the African slaves in the United States in 1863. But a century on from the abolition of slavery, King points out, black Americans still are not free in many respects.

‘I Have a Dream’: summary

King begins his speech by reminding his audience that it’s a century, or ‘five score years’, since that ‘great American’ Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This ensured the freedom of the African slaves, but Black Americans are still not free, King points out, because of racial segregation and discrimination.

America is a wealthy country, and yet many Black Americans live in poverty. It is as if the Black American is an exile in his own land. King likens the gathering in Washington to cashing a cheque: in other words, claiming money that is due to be paid.

Next, King praises the ‘magnificent words’ of the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence . King compares these documents to a promissory note, because they contain the promise that all men, including Black men, will be guaranteed what the Declaration of Independence calls ‘inalienable rights’: namely, ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’.

King asserts that America in the 1960s has ‘defaulted’ on this promissory note: in other words, it has refused to pay up. King calls it a ‘sacred obligation’, but America as a nation is like someone who has written someone else a cheque that has bounced and the money owed remains to be paid. But it is not because the money isn’t there: America, being a land of opportunity, has enough ‘funds’ to ensure everyone is prosperous enough.

King urges America to rise out of the ‘valley’ of segregation to the ‘sunlit path of racial justice’. He uses the word ‘brotherhood’ to refer to all Americans, since all men and women are God’s children. He also repeatedly emphasises the urgency of the moment. This is not some brief moment of anger but a necessary new start for America. However, King cautions his audience not to give way to bitterness and hatred, but to fight for justice in the right manner, with dignity and discipline.

Physical violence and militancy are to be avoided. King recognises that many white Americans who are also poor and marginalised feel a kinship with the Civil Rights movement, so all Americans should join together in the cause. Police brutality against Black Americans must be eradicated, as must racial discrimination in hotels and restaurants. States which forbid Black Americans from voting must change their laws.

Martin Luther King then comes to the most famous part of his speech, in which he uses the phrase ‘I have a dream’ to begin successive sentences (a rhetorical device known as anaphora ). King outlines the form that his dream, or ambition or wish for a better America, takes.

His dream, he tells his audience, is ‘deeply rooted’ in the American Dream: that notion that anybody, regardless of their background, can become prosperous and successful in the United States. King once again reminds his listeners of the opening words of the Declaration of Independence: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’

In his dream of a better future, King sees the descendants of former Black slaves and the descendants of former slave owners united, sitting and eating together. He has a dream that one day his children will live in a country where they are judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

Even in Mississippi and Alabama, states which are riven by racial injustice and hatred, people of all races will live together in harmony. King then broadens his dream out into ‘our hope’: a collective aspiration and endeavour. King then quotes the patriotic American song ‘ My Country, ’Tis of Thee ’, which describes America as a ‘sweet land of liberty’.

King uses anaphora again, repeating the phrase ‘let freedom ring’ several times in succession to suggest how jubilant America will be on the day that such freedoms are ensured. And when this happens, Americans will be able to join together and be closer to the day when they can sing a traditional African-American hymn : ‘Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.’

‘I Have a Dream’: analysis

Although Martin Luther King’s speech has become known by the repeated four-word phrase ‘I Have a Dream’, which emphasises the personal nature of his vision, his speech is actually about a collective dream for a better and more equal America which is not only shared by many Black Americans but by anyone who identifies with their fight against racial injustice, segregation, and discrimination.

Nevertheless, in working from ‘I have a dream’ to a different four-word phrase, ‘this is our hope’. The shift is natural and yet it is a rhetorical masterstroke, since the vision of a better nation which King has set out as a very personal, sincere dream is thus telescoped into a universal and collective struggle for freedom.

What’s more, in moving from ‘dream’ to a different noun, ‘hope’, King suggests that what might be dismissed as an idealistic ambition is actually something that is both possible and achievable. No sooner has the dream gathered momentum than it becomes a more concrete ‘hope’.

In his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, King was doing more than alluding to Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation one hundred years earlier. The opening words to his speech, ‘Five score years ago’, allude to a specific speech Lincoln himself had made a century before: the Gettysburg Address .

In that speech, delivered at the Soldiers’ National Cemetery (now known as Gettysburg National Cemetery) in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in November 1863, Lincoln had urged his listeners to continue in the fight for freedom, envisioning the day when all Americans – including Black slaves – would be free. His speech famously begins with the words: ‘Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’

‘Four score and seven years’ is eighty-seven years, which takes us back from 1863 to 1776, the year of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. So, Martin Luther King’s allusion to the words of Lincoln’s historic speech do two things: they call back to Lincoln’s speech but also, by extension, to the founding of the United States almost two centuries before. Although Lincoln and the American Civil War represented progress in the cause to make all Americans free regardless of their ethnicity, King makes it clear in ‘I Have a Dream’ that there is still some way to go.

In the last analysis, King’s speech is a rhetorically clever and emotionally powerful call to use non-violent protest to oppose racial injustice, segregation, and discrimination, but also to ensure that all Americans are lifted out of poverty and degradation.

But most of all, King emphasises the collective endeavour that is necessary to bring about the world he wants his children to live in: the togetherness, the linking of hands, which is essential to make the dream a reality.

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HISTORIC ARTICLE

Aug 28, 1963 ce: martin luther king jr. gives "i have a dream" speech.

On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington, a large gathering of civil rights protesters in Washington, D.C., United States.

Social Studies, Civics, U.S. History

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On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., took the podium at the March on Washington  and addressed the gathered crowd, which numbered 200,000 people or more. His speech became famous for its recurring phrase “I have a dream.” He imagined a future in which “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners" could "sit down together at the table of brotherhood,” a future in which his four children are judged not "by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." King's moving speech became a central part of his legacy. King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, in 1929. Like his father and grandfather, King studied theology and became a Baptist  pastor . In 1957, he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference ( SCLC ), which became a leading civil rights organization. Under King's leadership, the SCLC promoted nonviolent resistance to segregation, often in the form of marches and boycotts. In his campaign for racial equality, King gave hundreds of speeches, and was arrested more than 20 times. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his "nonviolent struggle for civil rights ." On April 4, 1968, King was shot and killed while standing on a balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.

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Related Resources

The 1963 March on Washington

A quarter million people and a dream.

On August 28, 1963, more than a quarter million people participated in the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, gathering near the Lincoln Memorial.

More than 3,000 members of the press covered this historic march, where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the exalted "I Have a Dream" speech.

Originally conceived by renowned labor leader A. Phillip Randolph and Roy Wilkins, Executive Secretary of the NAACP, the March on Washington evolved into a collaborative effort amongst major civil rights groups and icons of the day.

Stemming from a rapidly growing tide of grassroots support and outrage over the nation's racial inequities, the rally drew over 260,000 people from across the nation.

Celebrated as one of the greatest — if not the greatest — speech of the 20th century, Dr. King's celebrated speech, "I Have a Dream," was carried live by television stations across the country. You can read the full speech and watch a short film, below.

A March 20 Years in the Making

In 1941, A. Phillip Randolph first conceptualized a "march for jobs" in protest of the racial discrimination against African Americans from jobs created by WWII and the New Deal programs created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The march was stalled, however, after negotiations between Roosevelt and Randolph prompted the establishment of the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) and an executive order banning discrimination in defense industries.

The FEPC dissolved just five years later, causing Randolph to revive his plans. He looked to the charismatic Dr. King to breathe new life into the march.

NAACP and SCLC Center the March on Civil Rights

By the late 1950s, Dr. King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) were also planning to march on Washington, this time to march for freedom.

As the years passed on, the Civil Rights Act was still stalled in Congress, and equality for Americans of color still seemed like a far-fetched dream.

Randolph, his chief aide, Bayard Rustin, and Dr. King all decided it would be best to combine the two causes into one mega-march, the March for Jobs and Freedom.

NAACP, headed by Roy Wilkins, was called upon to be one of the leaders of the march.

As one of the largest and most influential civil rights groups at the time, our organization harnessed the collective power of its members, organizing a march that was focused on the advancement of civil rights and the actualization of Dr. King's dream.

The Big Six

A quarter-million people strong, the march drew activists from far and wide.

Leaders of the six prominent civil rights groups at the time joined forces in organizing the march.

The group included Randolph, leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Wilkins, Executive Secretary of the NAACP; Dr. King, Chairman of the SCLC; James Farmer, founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); John Lewis, President of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); and Whitney Young, Executive Director of the National Urban League.

Dr. King, originally slated to speak for 4 minutes, went on to speak for 16 minutes, giving one of the most iconic speeches in history.

"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 a table of brotherhood." – I Have a Dream, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It didn't take long for King's dream to come to fruition — the legislative aspect of the dream, that is.

After a decade of continued lobbying of Congress and the President led by the NAACP, plus other peaceful protests for civil rights, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

One year later, he signed the National Voting Rights Act of 1965 .

Together, these laws outlawed discrimination against blacks and women, effectively ending segregation, and sought to end disenfranchisement by making discriminatory voting practices illegal.

Ten years after King joined the civil rights fight, the campaign to secure the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act had achieved its goal – to ensure that black citizens would have the power to represent themselves in government.

2020 March on Washington

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered this iconic 'I Have a Dream' speech at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. See entire text of King's speech below.

I Have a Dream

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 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 languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.

So we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was the promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note in so far as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which 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. And so we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now.

This is no 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 promises of democracy; now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice; now is 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 for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment.

This sweltering summer of the Negro'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. And those who hope that the Negro 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 Negro 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.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the worn threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protests to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy, which has engulfed the Negro community, must not lead us to a distrust of all white people. For many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of Civil Rights, "When will you be satisfied?"

We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality; 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 Negro'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 Whites Only"; we cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote, and the Negro 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 great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution 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 Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, 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 on the red hills of Georgia, 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 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.

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 interposition and nullification — one day right there 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 that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be plain 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 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 symphony of brother-hood. 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.

And this will be the 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 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 snow-capped Rockies of Colorado; let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that.

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia; let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee; let freedom ring from every hill and mole hill of Mississippi. "From every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And when this happens, and 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."

Source: Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have A Dream: Writings and Speeches that Changed the World (San Francisco: Harper, 1986) via Teaching America History.

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Freedom's Ring "I Have a Dream" Speech

Main navigation.

Freedom's Ring  is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, annotated. Here you can compare the written and spoken speech, explore multimedia images, listen to movement activists and uncover historical context.

Fifty years ago, in the concluding address of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, King demanded the riches of freedom and the security of justice. Today his language of love, nonviolent direct action and redemptive suffering, resonates globally in the millions who stand up for freedom and elevate democracy to its ideals. How do the echoes of King's Dream live within you?

Freedom's Ring serves as an innovative and thought-provoking resource for teachers, students, and the larger community. Evan Bissell, a Bay Area artist and educator, and webdesigner Erik Loyer worked with King Institute's Dr. Andrea McEvoy Spero,  Dr. Clayborne Carson and Regina Covington to create an engaging experience that documents one of the most famous events in Civil Rights history. Freedom's Ring compliments the King Legacy Series by Beacon Press and the corresponding curriculum guide. 

I Have a Dream Speech Transcript – Martin Luther King Jr.

One of the most iconic and famous speeches of all time, Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was delivered during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. Read the full transcript of this classic speech.

Martin Luther King Jr.: ( 00:59 ) 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.

Martin Luther King Jr.: ( 01:32 ) 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 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. 100 years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. 100 years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. 100 years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.

Martin Luther King Jr.: ( 03:10 ) So we’ve come here today to dramatize the shameful condition. In a sense, we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which ever American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note in so far as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.

Martin Luther King Jr.: ( 04:25 ) 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’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom, and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no 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 promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is 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 for all of God’s children.

Martin Luther King Jr.: ( 06:16 ) It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summit of the Negroes legitimate discontent will not pass until that is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.

Martin Luther King Jr.: ( 06:53 ) There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro 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. But that is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plain of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protests to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy, which has engulfed the Negro community, must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize their destiny is tied up in our destiny.

Martin Luther King Jr.: ( 08:54 ) They have come realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone, and as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. They are those who asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. 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 Negroes 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 Whites Only. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote, and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Martin Luther King Jr.: ( 10:48 ) I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that honor and 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 northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friend, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, 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.”

Martin Luther King Jr.: ( 12:54 ) 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 our skin, but by the content of that character. I have a dream today.

Martin Luther King Jr.: ( 13:50 ) 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 interposition and nullification, one day right there 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.

Martin Luther King Jr.: ( 14:27 ) I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain 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 a faith that I 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 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.

Martin Luther King Jr.: ( 15:29 ) This will be the 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 fathers died, Land of the Pilgrim’s pride, From every mountainside, Let freedom ring. If America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

Martin Luther King Jr.: ( 15:58 ) 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 snow capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring, and when this happens, when we allow freedom 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 Catholic, 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!

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Early years

• The Montgomery bus boycott
• The Southern Christian Leadership Conference
• The letter from the Birmingham jail
• Challenges of the final years
• Historical significance and legacy

What did Martin Luther King, Jr., do?

What is martin luther king, jr., known for, who did martin luther king, jr., influence and in what ways, what was martin luther king’s family life like, how did martin luther king, jr., die.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Baptist minister and social rights activist in the United States in the 1950s and ’60s. He was a leader of the American civil rights movement . He organized a number of peaceful protests as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference , including the March on Washington in 1963. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and, at the time, he was the youngest person to have done so. Learn more.

Martin Luther King, Jr., is known for his contributions to the American civil rights movement in the 1960s. His most famous work is his “ I Have a Dream ” speech, delivered in 1963, in which he spoke of his dream of a United States that is void of segregation and racism. King also advocated for nonviolent methods of protest, and he organized and staged countless marches and boycotts.

Martin Luther King, Jr., influenced people around the world. He advocated for peaceful approaches to some of society’s biggest problems. He organized a number of marches and protests and was a key figure in the American civil rights movement . He was instrumental in the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike , the Montgomery bus boycott , and the March on Washington . The holiday honoring King is often celebrated as the MLK Day of Service, a reflection of his legacy of addressing social problems through collective action.

Martin Luther King, Jr., grew up as the middle child of Michael (later Martin Luther) King, Sr., and Alberta Williams King. His father was the minister of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta—the same church where Martin Luther King, Jr., would eventually minister. In 1953 King married Coretta Scott , and the two had four children: Yolanda, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott, and Bernice.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was standing on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, when he was shot by James Earl Ray . An hour later, King died at St. Joseph’s hospital. His death sparked riots across the country. In the United States he is memorialized on the third Monday of January every year— Martin Luther King, Jr., Day , which was first observed as a federal holiday in 1986.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. (born January 15, 1929, Atlanta, Georgia , U.S.—died April 4, 1968, Memphis , Tennessee) was a Baptist minister and social activist who led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. His leadership was fundamental to that movement’s success in ending the legal segregation of African Americans in the South and other parts of the United States. King rose to national prominence as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference , which promoted nonviolent tactics , such as the massive March on Washington (1963), to achieve civil rights . He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

King came from a comfortable middle-class family steeped in the tradition of the Southern Black ministry: both his father and maternal grandfather were Baptist preachers. His parents were college-educated, and King’s father had succeeded his father-in-law as pastor of the prestigious Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta . The family lived on Auburn Avenue, otherwise known as “Sweet Auburn,” the bustling “Black Wall Street,” home to some of the country’s largest and most prosperous Black businesses and Black churches in the years before the civil rights movement. Young Martin received a solid education and grew up in a loving extended family .

This secure upbringing, however, did not prevent King from experiencing the prejudices then common in the South . He never forgot the time when, at about age six, one of his white playmates announced that his parents would no longer allow him to play with King, because the children were now attending segregated schools. Dearest to King in these early years was his maternal grandmother, whose death in 1941 left him shaken and unstable. Upset because he had learned of her fatal heart attack while attending a parade without his parents’ permission, the 12-year-old King attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window.

In 1944, at age 15, King entered Morehouse College in Atlanta under a special wartime program intended to boost enrollment by admitting promising high-school students like King. Before beginning college, however, King spent the summer on a tobacco farm in Connecticut; it was his first extended stay away from home and his first substantial experience of race relations outside the segregated South. He was shocked by how peacefully the races mixed in the North. “Negroes and whites go [to] the same church,” he noted in a letter to his parents. “I never [thought] that a person of my race could eat anywhere.” This summer experience in the North only deepened King’s growing hatred of racial segregation .

At Morehouse, King favored studies in medicine and law, but these were eclipsed in his senior year by a decision to enter the ministry, as his father had urged. King’s mentor at Morehouse was the college president , Benjamin Mays , a social gospel activist whose rich oratory and progressive ideas had left an indelible imprint on King’s father. Committed to fighting racial inequality, Mays accused the African American community of complacency in the face of oppression, and he prodded the Black church into social action by criticizing its emphasis on the hereafter instead of the here and now; it was a call to service that was not lost on the teenage King. He graduated from Morehouse in 1948.

King spent the next three years at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester , Pennsylvania, where he became acquainted with Mohandas Gandhi ’s philosophy of nonviolence as well as with the thought of contemporary Protestant theologians. He earned a bachelor of divinity degree in 1951. Renowned for his oratorical skills, King was elected president of Crozer’s student body, which was composed almost exclusively of white students. As a professor at Crozer wrote in a letter of recommendation for King, “The fact that with our student body largely Southern in constitution a colored man should be elected to and be popular [in] such a position is in itself no mean recommendation.” From Crozer, King went to Boston University , where, in seeking a firm foundation for his own theological and ethical inclinations, he studied man’s relationship to God and received a doctorate (1955) for a dissertation titled “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.”

Martin Luther King Jr.’s Famous Speech Almost Didn’t Have the Phrase 'I Have a Dream'

Widely regarded as one of the world’s most “transformative and influential” speeches alongside Abraham Lincoln ’s 1863 Gettysburg Address and Winston Churchill’s 1940 “Blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech, the impact of King’s words that hot summer afternoon in Washington, D.C., struck a chord with civil rights advocates near and far and became a powerful rallying cry.

King’s speech sparked a movement, which helped create the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, ending racial segregation in the United States.

But those four famous words almost didn’t make it into the speech.

King wanted the speech to be 'like the Gettysburg Address'

Before he stepped up to the podium that day, King was already known on the national stage for his civil rights work. He had already been a leader in the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and the Greensboro sit-in movement in 1960 and was known for his 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail , where he was taken after a peaceful demonstration.

The Baptist minister, who was also the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was known as a powerful orator, but the bulk of his audience had been within the African American community. Fellow civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph had reached out to him and other prominent figures in the movement to organize the march followed by three hours of speeches.

The three major television networks at the time — ABC, CBS and NBC — had all promised to cover the event, so King knew the stakes were high. Even though he was limited to five minutes, his goal was clear: To make a speech with impact on the nation “like the Gettysburg address.”

He confided in a team of trusted advisors

To carefully craft the right words, King turned to his inner circle. The first draft was written by Stanley Levison and Clarence Jones, two of his advisers.

“When it came to my speech drafts, [King] often acted like an interior designer,” Jones said, according to The Guardian . “I would deliver four strong walls and he would use his God-given abilities to furnish the place so it felt like home.”

Even though they knew the importance of the speech, with the logistics, they only gathered as a group at the Willard Hotel the evening before the speech. “We met in the lobby rather than in a suite, under the assumption that the lobby would be harder to wiretap,” Jones wrote in the Washington Post . “It was with this odd start, hiding in plain sight, that 12 hours before the March on Washington began, Martin gathered with a small group of advisers to hammer out the themes of his speech.”

Even though King was happy with the draft, he had wanted to get as much input as possible. “So that evening he had a cross-section of advisers present to fill any blind spots,” Jones wrote. “Cleveland Robinson, Walter Fauntroy, Bernard Lee, Ralph Abernathy , Lawrence Reddick and I joined him, along with Wyatt Walker and Bayard Rustin , who were in and out of our deliberations.”

Of course, everyone had their own take, which became a challenge to juggle. “As we ate sandwiches, our suggestions tumbled out,” Jones remembers. “Cleve, Lawrence and I saw the speech as an opportunity to stake an ideological and political marker in the debate over civil rights and segregation. Others were more inclined for Martin to deliver a sort of church sermon, steeped in parables and Bible quotes. Some, however, worried that biblical language would obfuscate the real message — reform of the legal system. And still others wanted Martin to direct his remarks to the students, Black and white, who would be marching that day.”

READ MORE: Martin Luther King Jr. and 8 Black Activists Who Led the Civil Rights Movement

'I have a dream' was originally cut from the speech

The idea of the “dream” had actually been one that King long talked about, almost like a theme throughout his previous speeches. Walker had the strongest opinion: “Don’t use the lines about ‘I have a dream.’ It’s trite, it’s cliche. You’ve used it too many times already.”

Respecting his view, the mention of the dream was cut from the speech. At 4 a.m., King finally went to bed. “I am now going upstairs to my room to counsel with my Lord,” he said, according to The Guardian . “I will see you all tomorrow.”

King said 'it would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment'

While everything was meticulously planned, the organizers still worried there may not be the turnout they hoped for. After all, they set a goal of 100,000 to attend the March on Washington.

But on August 28 — despite the heat in the nation’s capital, which reached 87 degrees Fahrenheit with uncomfortable humidity — people started showing up en masse. Among them were notable names: Josephine Baker , Marlon Brando , Harry Belafonte , Sammy Davis Jr. , James Garner , Charlton Heston, Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier .

“It was truly staggering. Estimates vary widely, depending on the agenda of who was keeping count, but those of us who were involved in planning The March put the number at a minimum of 250,000,” Jones wrote in his book , Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation . “They showed up to connect with The Movement, to draw strength from the speakers and from each other.”

By the time it was King’s turn, some people had already headed out because of the stifling heat. But nothing was holding him back from his moment on the national stage.

"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,” he first addressed the crowd.

Then, much like the Lincoln speech he sought inspiration from that started, “Four score and seven years ago,” he started with the words, “Five score years ago,” and highlighted the importance of the Emancipation Proclamation .

“But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free,” he continued, before describing the state of African American life in the United States.

Then he moved into the purpose of the march: “In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, Black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

“It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment,” he continued, emphasizing why it was essential for imminent action. “And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”

A gospel singer prompted King to say 'I have a dream'

While his words were impactful, they didn’t have the tremendous punch he was hoping for. But then gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who had sung “I’ve Been ‘Buked and I’ve Been Scorned” and was close to King, instinctively shouted out, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin.”

Throwing the script out the window, he turned to his dream.

“I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream,” he started before launching into his most famous passage. “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,'” he stated.

He described a world of equality, with various slices of what that looked like. “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 said. And in between every scene of the “dream,” he stated, “I have a dream today.”

Building up a cadence that had the crowd engaged and enthused, he concluded: “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!’”

King knew that by abandoning his manuscript, he created the strongest impact

Looking back on the day, Jones notes a shift as soon King threw all the prepared remarks out the window: “When he was reading from his text, he stood like a lecturer. But from the moment he set that text aside, he took on the stance of a Baptist preacher.”

And that was the kind of messaging America needed to hear.

Even King looked back on all the long hours preparing and realized that nothing resonated more than reading a crowd and trusting his instinct.

“I started out reading the speech, and I read it down to a point,” he later said. “The audience response was wonderful that day… and all of a sudden this thing came to me that… I’d used many times before… ‘I have a dream.’ And I just felt that I wanted to use it here… I used it, and at that point I just turned aside from the manuscript altogether. I didn’t come back to it.”

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Black History Month 2024

5 mlk speeches you should know. spoiler: 'i have a dream' isn't on the list.

Scott Neuman

The Rev. Ralph Abernathy (left) shakes hands with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Ala., on March 22, 1956, as a big crowd of supporters cheers for King, who had just been found guilty of leading the Montgomery bus boycott. Gene Herrick/AP hide caption

The Rev. Ralph Abernathy (left) shakes hands with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Ala., on March 22, 1956, as a big crowd of supporters cheers for King, who had just been found guilty of leading the Montgomery bus boycott.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s " I Have a Dream " speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, is so famous that it often eclipses his other speeches.

King's greatest contribution to the Civil Rights Movement was his oratory, says Jason Miller, an English professor at North Carolina State University who has written extensively on King's speeches.

Black History Month 2024 has begun. Here's this year's theme and other things to know

"King's first biographer was a dear friend of Dr. King's, L.D. Reddick ," Miller says. Reddick once suggested to King that maybe more marching and less speaking was needed to push the cause of civil rights forward. According to Miller, King is said to have responded, "My dear man, you never deny an artist his medium."

Miller says that in his research, he found numerous examples of King reworking and recycling old speeches. "He would rewrite them ... just to change phrasings and rhythms. And so he prepared a great deal, often 19 lines per page on a yellow legal sheet."

Often, King would write notes to himself in the margins: "what tenor and tone to deliver," Miller says.

That phrasing and an understanding of cadence were all important to the success of these speeches, according to Carolyn Calloway-Thomas, director of graduate studies at the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University.

King's training in the pulpit gave him a strong insight into what moves an audience, she says. "Preachers are performers. They know when to pause. How long to pause. And with what effect. And he certainly was a great user of dramatic pauses."

Here are four of King's speeches that sometimes get overlooked, plus the one he delivered the day before his 1968 assassination. Collectively, they represent historical signposts on the road to civil rights.

" Give Us the Ballot " (May 17, 1957 — Washington, D.C.)

King spoke at the Lincoln Memorial three years to the day after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education , which struck down the "separate but equal" doctrine that had allowed segregation in public schools.

But Jim Crow persisted throughout much of the South. The yearlong Montgomery bus boycott , sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks, had ended only months before King's speech. And the Voting Rights Act of 1965 , which sought to end disenfranchisement of Black voters, was still eight years away.

"It's a very important speech because he's talking about the importance of voting and he's responding to some of the Southern resistance to the Brown decision," says Vicki Crawford, director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Collection at Morehouse College, King's alma mater .

U.S. deputy marshals escort 6-year-old Ruby Bridges from William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in November 1960. The first-grader was the only Black child enrolled in the school, where parents of white students were boycotting the court-ordered integration law and were taking their children out of school. AP hide caption

U.S. deputy marshals escort 6-year-old Ruby Bridges from William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in November 1960. The first-grader was the only Black child enrolled in the school, where parents of white students were boycotting the court-ordered integration law and were taking their children out of school.

The speech calls out both major political parties for betraying "the cause of justice" and failing to do enough to ensure civil rights for Blacks. He accuses Democrats of "capitulating to the prejudices and undemocratic practices of the Southern Dixiecrats," referring to the party's pro-segregation wing. The Republicans, King said, had instead capitulated "to the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing, reactionary Northerners."

King speaks at a mass demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on May 17, 1957, as civil rights leaders called on the U.S. government to put more teeth into the Supreme Court's desegregation decisions. Charles Gorry/AP hide caption

King speaks at a mass demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on May 17, 1957, as civil rights leaders called on the U.S. government to put more teeth into the Supreme Court's desegregation decisions.

He also indicts Northern liberals who are "so bent on seeing all sides" that they are "neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm" in their commitment to civil rights.

"King [was] calling on both parties to take a look at themselves," Crawford says.

With the movement gaining steam, King used his speech to take stock of where things stood and what must be done next, Calloway-Thomas says. "He is revisiting the status of African American people."

" Our God Is Marching On! " (March 25, 1965 — Montgomery, Ala.)

The speech was delivered after the last of three Selma-Montgomery marches to call for voting rights. Protesters were beaten by Alabama law enforcement officials at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on March 7 in what came to be known as Bloody Sunday . Among the nearly 60 wounded that day by club-wielding police was John Lewis, the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), who suffered a fractured skull. (Lewis later served 17 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives.) A second attempt to reach Montgomery a few days later was again turned back at the bridge. In a third try, marchers finally reached the steps of the Alabama State Capitol on March 25.

Rep. John Lewis, A Force In The Civil Rights Movement, Dead At 80

"Finally the group of protesters gets all the way to the Capitol, and King delivers a speech to what we think is about 25,000 people," Miller says. The speech is also often referred to as the "How Long? Not Long" speech because of that powerful refrain, Miller says.

Jonathan Eig, author of the biography King: A Life , published last year, says he thinks about three-fourths of the speech was written out. "Then [King] goes off script and gives a sermon."

That's when he answers the question "How long?" for his audience. How long will it be until Black people have the same rights as white people? "Not long, because no lie can live forever," King tells his exuberant listeners.

"That's the part that really echoes. No question," Eig says. "And I think that's when he knew he was at his best. He knew that he could bring the crowd to its feet and inspire them."

Also notable is a famous anecdote that King shared in his speech, one that appeared earlier in his 1963 " Letter from a Birmingham Jail " addressed to his "fellow clergymen." It relates the words of Sister Pollard, a 70-year-old Black woman who had walked everywhere, refusing to ride the Montgomery buses during the 1955-1956 boycott.

"One day, she was asked while walking if she didn't want to ride," King said, speaking to the crowd that had just successfully marched from Selma to Montgomery. "And when she answered, 'No,' the person said, 'Well, aren't you tired?' And with her ungrammatical profundity, she said, 'My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.'"

"And in a real sense this afternoon, we can say that our feet are tired but our souls are rested," he said.

The story of Sister Pollard would be used again in the coming years.

But the speech may be best remembered today for another line, where King said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

In fact, King was using the words of a 19th-century Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker . Parker was an abolitionist who secretly funded John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, often seen as an opening salvo of the Civil War. In a sermon given seven years before the raid, Parker used the line that King would pick up more than a century later.

"Dr. King absorbed all kinds of material, heard from others, used it on his own. But this is what we call appropriation or transformation when the old seems new," Miller says.

" Beyond Vietnam " (April 4, 1967 — New York City)

King had already begun speaking out about the war in Vietnam, but this speech was his most forceful statement on the conflict to date. Black soldiers were dying in disproportionate numbers . King noted the irony that in Vietnam, "Negro and white boys" were killing and dying alongside each other "for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools."

"So we watch them, in brutal solidarity, burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago," he said. "I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor."

An infantry soldier runs across a burned-out clearing in Vietnam on Jan. 4, 1967. Horst Faas/AP hide caption

An infantry soldier runs across a burned-out clearing in Vietnam on Jan. 4, 1967.

SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael , a major civil rights figure, had come out against the war and encouraged King to join him. But some in King's own inner circle had cautioned him against speaking about Vietnam.

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Stokely carmichael, a philosopher behind the black power movement.

Although powerful and timely, the speech drew a harsh and immediate reaction from a nation that had only just begun to reckon with the rising casualties and economic toll of the war. Both The Washington Post and The New York Times published editorials criticizing it. The Post said King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people" and the Times said he had "dampened his prospects for becoming the Negro leader who might be able to get the nation 'moving again' on civil rights."

King knew he would take heat for the speech, especially from the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, with whom he'd worked to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, a year later, the Voting Rights Act, through Congress. With the presidential election just 19 months away, continued support of Johnson's Vietnam policy was crucial to his reelection. Nearly 10 months after the speech, however, the Tet Offensive launched by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army would help turn U.S. public opinion against the war and lead Johnson to not seek another term.

But in April 1967, the reaction to the speech was "far worse than King or his advisers imagined," says Miller, of North Carolina State University. Johnson "excommunicated" the civil rights leader, he says, adding that even leaders of the NAACP expressed disappointment that King had focused attention on the war.

"His immediate response was that he was crushed," Miller says. "There are a number of people who have documented that he literally broke down in tears when he realized the kind of backlash towards it."

He was criticized from both sides of the political aisle. Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., a staunch conservative who made a failed run for the presidency in 1964, said King's speech "could border a bit on treason."

"King himself said that he anguished over doing the speech," says Indiana University's Calloway-Thomas.

" The Three Evils of Society " (Aug. 31, 1967 — Chicago)

The three evils King outlines in this speech are poverty, racism and militarism . Referring to Johnson's Great Society program to help lift rural Americans out of poverty, King said that it had been "shipwrecked off the coast of Asia, on the dreadful peninsula of Vietnam" and that meanwhile, "the poor, Black and white are still perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."

Calloway-Thomas calls it "the most scathing critique of American society by King that I have ever read."

"We need, according to him, a radical redistribution of political and economic power," she says, "Is that implying reparations? Is that implying socialism?"

Calloway-Thomas hears in King's words an antecedent to the Black Lives Matter movement. "One sees in that speech some relationship between the rhetoric of Dr. King at that moment and the rhetoric of Black Lives Matter at this moment," she says.

It was also one of the many instances where King quoted poet Langston Hughes, with whom he had become friends. "What happens to a dream deferred? It leads to bewildering frustration and corroding bitterness," King said in a nod to Hughes' most famous poem, " Harlem ."

King and Hughes traveled together to Nigeria in 1960, Miller notes, calling the poet an often unrecognized but nonetheless "central figure" in the early Civil Rights Movement. "They exchanged letters. Dr. King told [Hughes] how much he used his poetry. Dr. King used seven poems by Langston Hughes in his sermons and speeches from 1956 to 1958."

" I've Been to the Mountaintop! " (April 3, 1968 — Memphis, Tenn.)

This is King's last speech, delivered a day before his assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968. He was in the city to lend his support and his voice to the city's striking sanitation workers .

"He wasn't expecting to give a speech that night," according to Clayborne Carson, Martin Luther King, Jr. centennial professor emeritus at Stanford University. "He was hoping to get out of it. He was not feeling well."

"They call him and say, 'The people here want to hear you. They don't want to hear us.' And plus, the place was packed that night" despite a heavy downpour, Carson says. "I think he recognized that people really wanted to hear him. And despite the state of his health, he decided to go."

Martin Luther King Jr. makes his last public appearance, at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tenn., on April 3, 1968. The following day, King was assassinated on his motel balcony. Charles Kelly/AP hide caption

Martin Luther King Jr. makes his last public appearance, at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tenn., on April 3, 1968. The following day, King was assassinated on his motel balcony.

The haunting words, in which King says, "I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you" have led many people to think he was prophesying his own death the following day at the hands of assassin James Earl Ray .

"The speech really does feel a bit like his own eulogy," says Eig. "He's talking about earthly salvation and heavenly salvation. And, in the end, boldly equating himself with Moses, who doesn't live to see the Promised Land."

The speech is largely, if not entirely, extemporaneous. And by the end, King was exhausted, says Carson. "It's pretty clear when you watch the film that he's not in the best shape."

"He barely makes it to the end," he says.

"But he relied on his audience to bring him along," Carson says. "I think it's one of those speeches where the crowd is inspiring him and he's inspiring them. That's what makes it work."

It's a great speech, made greater still because it was his last, says Calloway-Thomas.

"You have this wonderful man who epitomized the social and political situation in the United States in the 20th century," she says. "There he is, dying so tragically and dreadfully. It has a lot of pity and pathos buried inside it."

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National Archives at New York City

Martin Luther King, Jr.

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr., delivered a speech to a massive group of civil rights marchers gathered around the Lincoln memorial in Washington DC. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom brought together the nations most prominent civil rights leaders, along with tens of thousands of marchers, to press the United States government for equality. The culmination of this event was the influential and most memorable speech of Dr. King's career. Popularly known as the "I have a Dream" speech, the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. influenced the Federal government to take more direct actions to more fully realize racial equality.

Mister Maestro, Inc., and Twentieth Century Fox Records Company recorded the speech and offered the recording for sale. Dr. King and his attorneys claimed that the speech was copyrighted and the recording violated that copyright. The court found in favor of Dr. King. Among the papers filed in the case and available at the National Archives at New York City is a deposition given by Martin Luther King, Jr. and signed in his own hand.

Educational Activities

Discussion Questions:

• What was the official name for the event on August 28th, 1963? What does this title tell us about its focus?
• What organizations were involved in the the March on Washington? What does this tell us about the event?
• How does Martin Luther King, Jr. describe his writing process?
• What are the major issues of this case? In other words, what is Martin Luther King, Jr. disputing?
• How does Martin Luther King, Jr. describe his earlier speech on June 23rd in Detroit?
• How does Martin Luther King, Jr. compare and contrast the two "I have a dream..." speeches? What are the major similarities and differences?

Additional Resources from the National Archives concerning Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Official Program for the March on Washington
• The March (from the National Archives YouTube Channel)
• Searching for Martin Luther King, Jr., in the records of the National Archives  
• Records on African Americans at the National Archives
• Teaching With Documents: Court Documents Related to Martin Luther King, Jr., and Memphis Sanitation Workers

Other Resources on Martin Luther King, Jr.

• The King Center
• National Park Service-National Historic Site
• Read Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech in its entirety  - National Public Radio (NPR)

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The story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1966 visit to Sunflower County

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Editor’s note: This article was written by Bryan Davis, publisher of The Enterprise-Tocsin newspaper in Indianola. It first published on June 21 and is republished below with permission. Click here to read the story on The Enterpise-Tocsin’s website.

It all happened on a dirt pile, on a construction site.

That was not the typical pulpit for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but on June 21, 1966, on the grounds of the Sunflower County Courthouse, that would have to do. 

King arrived in Indianola that afternoon with little fanfare. There was no stage or speaker system set up outside of the courthouse. 

The crowd was thin by the standards of most of King’s speeches. That didn’t matter. The famed Civil Rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner was going to say what he came to say. 

About 450 people, mostly local Black citizens, gathered to hear him speak. And what a speech it was. 

King’s stop in Indianola probably would never have happened had it not been for James Meredith being shot on the second day of his famed March Against Fear earlier that month.  That prompted King and other Civil Rights leaders to come to the state to finish the march. 

His speech in Indianola has long been relegated to the footnotes of history, but the words spoken on the courthouse grounds that day may have revealed one of King’s more vulnerable moments. 

Indianola resident and former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Field Secretary Charles McLaurin told The Enterprise-Tocsin that the march was originally intended to route straight down Highway 51 from Memphis to Jackson, but voting rights hero and Ruleville native Fannie Lou Hamer asked McLaurin to travel to Grenada to ask King and SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael to divert into the Delta. 

“She said, ‘We got fear here too,’” McLaurin recounted. 

King was fighting wars on multiple fronts during the summer of 1966. His primary focus was no longer on the segregationist South. He was spending a lot of time in larger northern cities like Chicago, fighting for equal and affordable housing rights. 

After Meredith was shot, he agreed to join the march, and he was often back-and-forth that summer between places like Chicago, Atlanta and Mississippi.

In his own circle, there was intense infighting about the “Black Power” slogan that was becoming more popular during SNCC rallies. 

King vehemently opposed the Black Power movement, so much so that he returned to Mississippi on multiple occasions that summer in order to squash momentum from that side and to promote nonviolence.  

By the morning of June 21, 1966, King was back in Mississippi. 

That day, the March Against Fear splintered off into two groups. The main cluster of marchers pushed on from the hot, dusty Delta town of Louise toward Yazoo City. 

A smaller contingency, led by King, flew to Meridian, with hopes of arriving later that day in Philadelphia to help locals there pay tribute to Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, three Civil Rights workers who had been murdered exactly two years before in Neshoba County. 

King would attend three rallies that day. One of those was in Philadelphia. The second was in Indianola. The third was in Yazoo City. 

Local white leaders in Indianola and Yazoo City, many involved in the White Citizens Council, warned away counter protesters in an effort to keep the peace. 

White leadership in Philadelphia and Neshoba County did not seem quite as worried about negative publicity, and many seemed to revel in the violence that followed. 

The events that unfolded in Philadelphia had an immediate impact on King, and when he arrived in Indianola to speak later that day, he was fired up. 

“Hatred is running very deep there,” King said of Philadelphia, according to an article in the Delta Democrat-Times the next day. “Something is going to have to be done about it.” 

King vented in Indianola, and he left out no one, including state, local and federal policing agencies, as well as Sunflower County’s own Senator James O. Eastland. 

“We have to get rid of Eastland if the Civil Rights movement is to go forward,” the Clarion Ledger reported King as saying at the Sunflower County Courthouse.  

On June 22, 1966, accounts of King’s speech in Indianola flooded most of the nation’s newspapers. Many of those accounts were on the front pages of those papers. 

By nightfall on June 21, King was in Yazoo City, his attention diverted somewhat from Philadelphia back to the Black Power movement. His tone was much more collected than it had been in Indianola. 

King and the marchers left Yazoo City and traveled down Highway 16 toward Canton. A historical marker on the grounds of the American Methodist Episcopal Church in Benton commemorates King’s brief stop there along the way.

There is no such marker at the courthouse in Sunflower County. 

On June 23, 1966, in Canton, marchers made national headlines again when they were teargassed by law enforcement when they tried to pitch camp on the grounds of a local public school. 

Meredith would recover from his gunshot wound, and he returned to the march the day before things ended in Jackson on June 26, 1966. 

King and the movement moved on, and his stop in Indianola soon faded into history.

The Road to Indianola

By the summer of 1966, Charles McLaurin had joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as a field secretary, and the Indianola resident also had embraced the notion of Black Power.

“Dr. King espoused nonviolence. Stokely never did. None of us did, especially the Mississippians,” McLaurin said. “We made a pledge to support nonviolence as a technique for change. That was a commitment. They made commitments, and Stokely often bumped heads with King about nonviolence and turning the other cheek.”

McLaurin, a Hinds County native, came to Ruleville in northern Sunflower County in 1962, and he would later play a pivotal role during Freedom Summer in 1964. 

Trained by the late Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers, McLaurin was on the bus ride with Fannie Lou Hamer and others that drove from Ruleville to the Sunflower County Courthouse in 1962 to attempt voter registration.  

Like many other Civil Rights workers during that time, McLaurin was beaten on multiple occasions, his life was threatened, and he was arrested over 30 times. 

It’s not surprising that by 1966 McLaurin had grown weary of King’s more tempered approach to change. 

“Basically, we were all after freedom, it was just a matter of the approach we used in the community to organize,” McLaurin said. 

Black Power did not necessarily mean violence, McLaurin said, but it scared whites and Blacks just the same.  

“We knew the minute they were able to attach violence to us, we were all dead,” McLaurin said. “They’d shoot us all tomorrow.” 

King was often visibly frustrated with Carmichael’s aggressive slogan, but the two remained close, photographed shoulder-to-shoulder, talking and smiling during the march that summer. 

“They were often together,” McLaurin said. “They weren’t enemies. I disagreed with some of the things we did. I realized the ultimate goal was to free all of us.”

But things had come to a head at Broad Street Park in Greenwood on the evening of June 16, 1966. 

King was not in the state that day, and when Carmichael and other organizers attempted to pitch tents on the grounds of a public school there, Carmichael and two others were arrested. 

“Once we got back and Stokely was in jail, we made up our minds to stay in Greenwood, even if they killed everybody,” McLaurin said.

When he came out of the jail and onto the stage that night, Carmichael threw down the gauntlet. 

“We been saying freedom for six years, and we ain’t got nothin’,” he said. “What we got to start saying now is Black Power! We want Black Power!” 

That speech immediately received national attention, King, who was in Chicago that day, included. 

It wasn’t long before he rejoined the March Against Fear to offer support to the marchers.

It was also an attempt to quell the uprising within his own movement and to reassure whites and Blacks in the South that he was committed to nonviolence. 

Five days later, while the main march pushed toward Yazoo City, King was drawn to Philadelphia for the memorial service for Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney.  

Philadelphia was by no means a “City of Brotherly Love” that day. 

The violence that erupted there sparked national coverage, with photographs and stories on the front pages of many newspapers, including The Ithaca Journal in New York and the Decatur Herald in Illinois. 

“This is a terrible town,” King said of Philadelphia, according to an Associated Press report in the Decatur paper. “The worst I’ve seen. There is a complete reign of terror here.” 

Mourners of the three Civil Rights workers were met with jeers, taunts and even some violence from about 400 whites. 

“I think this is by far the worst situation I’ve ever been in,” King was reported as saying in a Sacramento Bee article. “This is a complete climate of terror and breakdown of law and order.” 

Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey had left town ahead of the rally, leaving in charge Deputy Cecil Price, the man who had arrested Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney two years earlier and was at the time awaiting trial on federal civil rights charges related to the three murders, according to Aram Goudsouzian’s book Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power and the Meredith March Against Fear. 

Any additional law enforcement manpower,  state or federal, seemed unwelcomed by Price and the local deputies and policemen, according to the accounts in Goudsouzian’s book. 

Price attempted to block King from walking up the courthouse steps there. 

“I’m not afraid of any man,” King said, according to newspaper reports. “Before I will be a slave, I will be dead in my grave.” 

Several white men shouted, “We’ll help you” in response to that statement. Whites continued their taunts and threw cherry bombs, one right at King’s feet. 

“Men with hatred on their faces, who want to turn this country backward,” King said during his discourse at the Neshoba courthouse, according to the Clarion Ledger. 

“Negroes were stoned in Philadelphia during the day as they marched to the downtown area from a church a mile away,” the Clarion Ledger article said. “One man was clubbed.”

A pair of cameramen were “manhandled” and their equipment “smashed.” 

“White youths, wielding ax handles and hoes, grabbed Negroes in the line of march and started fights that were broken up by police,” the article continued. 

“King, head of the Southern (Christian) Leadership Conference, didn’t flinch when a cherry bomb exploded loudly at his feet,” the Mississippi paper described. “He said afterward he considered Philadelphia ‘By far the toughest town we have been in’…He told newsmen he would ask for federal protection in the town, because he intended to return.” 

The worst violence happened after King departed, when groups of whites repeatedly exchanged gunfire with members of the Freedom Democratic Party after dark, resulting in one of the white men being shot but not killed. 

According to reports, three carloads of white men drove “into a Negro neighborhood at Philadelphia at 9:30 p.m.,” and that is when the gunfire started. 

By that time, King had come and gone from Indianola, and he was in Yazoo City, getting ready to start the final leg of the Meredith March Against Fear. 

King’s Arrival in Sunflower County

When King left Philadelphia, he flew to Sunflower County, lagging the larger group of Meredith marchers, who had arrived in Yazoo City earlier that day. 

Prior to King’s arrival here, Hamer had led a morning rally from the town of Sunflower down Highway 49 toward Indianola. 

“During a rest just north of the Sunflower River Bridge, march leader Fannie Lou Hamer said that, ‘In addition to the charges on the placards, the protest was against alleged police brutality and voter intimidation,’” an article in the DD-T said. 

Meanwhile, Indianola police were preparing for the worst, warning whites to steer clear of the marchers and King’s speech. 

“Indianola police at noon were preparing to handle crowds of up to several hundred here today after Negro leader Martin Luther King scheduled two civil rights speeches inside the city limits,” the same DD-T report said. 

Originally, King was slated to give his afternoon speech at the courthouse, which was to be followed by an evening speech at Saint Benedict the Moor. The latter never happened. 

Police had roadblocks prepared for downtown Indianola, the article said, while then-Chief of Police Bryce Alexander told the DD-T that about 30 law enforcement personnel were going to be on hand to prevent incidents like the ones King had encountered earlier in Neshoba County, although it is likely the Indianola authorities knew few details about the Philadelphia rally at that point. 

“We aren’t anticipating any trouble here,” Alexander told the paper. “Our responsibility will begin as soon as the marchers enter the city limits. You have to be prepared in case somebody gets a few drinks in him.”

McLaurin said that he met King at the city limits on Highway 82 East. 

Hamer, who had originally requested King’s presence in the Delta, had to leave before King had arrived, McLaurin said. 

McLaurin escorted King and others into Indianola to the courthouse grounds. 

Sunflower County was in the process of building a new courthouse during the summer of 1966, and there were few places on the property that seemed appropriate for a speech. 

“There was a mound of dirt,” McLaurin said. 

It wasn’t pretty, but it was the right elevation for a speech. 

“Dr. King and I stood on a mound of dirt right there, and he spoke,” McLaurin said. 

McLaurin’s role in the movement had evolved since Freedom Summer in 1964, but he was still very familiar with Sunflower County and the late Sheriff Bill Hollowell.

The two had formed a bond the previous four years, and they had a good working relationship. 

Hollowell, like many others here, did not want to expose the county to negative press, so he would often lend protection to Civil Rights workers, McLaurin said. 

On this occasion, he even allowed McLaurin to have use of the Sunflower County Civil Defense bullhorn. McLaurin and King stood atop the dirt pile on the west side of the courthouse, facing Court Street. 

McLaurin said that he held the bullhorn while King vented about Philadelphia, vowing to return to that town as soon as possible. 

Before long, McLaurin said, the few whites who had shown up for King’s rally were irate about the fact that King had access to the county’s bullhorn. Hollowell, he said, had to act just as indignant about it. 

“He loaned me that civil defense bullhorn, and then he was back in there yelling, like I had taken it from him,” McLaurin said with a chuckle. “But I knew what he was doing, because he was around all of these white people.” 

McLaurin said that he and Hollowell later had a laugh over the bullhorn incident. 

Jim Pullen was one of just a handful of white people who witnessed King’s speech that day. A teenager at the time, Pullen said that he understood the significance of King’s arrival. 

“He was doing a great thing and doing a great job at it,” Pullen told The E-T in an interview. 

Pullen said that he worked afternoons at his stepfather’s furniture store on Court Street. 

“That particular morning, the (Black) man who worked for my daddy had gotten a pretty good head of knowledge about it,” Pullen said. “He said, ‘Martin Luther King is supposed to come here today.’”

The two made a trip to a nearby store and bought snacks for the occasion. 

“We went to one of the Chinese grocery stores on Second Street and got us some sardines, crackers and red soda pop,” Pullen said. “We got up in the window, and we waited for the excitement. Sure enough, there comes the crowd.” 

The two positioned themselves in the store’s upper room, waiting for the main attraction. 

“We got up in one of those windows,” Pullen said. “My daddy, and the other man, the white man who worked for my daddy, they’d be downstairs, and they wouldn’t be paying much attention to it at all. We thought if we get away upstairs, number one, they won’t find us. They won’t climb the steps and be coming around looking for us.”

Pullen still remembers nearly six decades later King standing on that elevated soil. 

“There was a big pile of dirt they had piled up over to the front right of (the courthouse),” he said. “That’s where Dr. King found a place where he could get up and he could be seen. He gave a speech, but of course I can’t recount all of what he might have said.”

King was still visibly frustrated about Philadelphia when he climbed atop that mound. 

He claimed that state, federal and local police not only “stood by” and watched the Neshoba violence unfold, but that some law enforcement officers “actually encouraged” attacks on marchers. 

He not only attacked the police in Philadelphia and then-Senator Eastland, but he roasted the mayor of Ruleville as well, according to newspaper reports. 

Of Eastland, King urged those in attendance to work toward replacing the senior senator, the Clarion Ledger said, if not during the 1966 election cycle, then perhaps the next one. 

“We’re not seeking to destroy the white people of Mississippi,” King said, according to a June 22 DD-T article. “We’re only seeking to make them better people.”

The DD-T quoted King in Indianola as also suggesting “joining hands with my white brothers” for the progress of the state and the South. 

Unlike in Philadelphia that day, the DD-T described the crowd at the Sunflower County Courthouse as being “closely guarded by county, state and Justice Department law enforcement officials.” 

“All of the officials involved seemed determined to prevent any incidents which would reflect on the image of the area,” the article said. “Hecklers and shouts of derision from spectators were non-existent.” 

Eastland’s campaign would later use King’s words in Indianola in a fall statewide newspaper ad. 

“Who says ‘defeat Jim Eastland?’” the ad read, with photos below of admitted communist Phil Lapansky and King. Below King’s photo, the Indianola quote, “We have to get rid of Jim Eastland if the Civil Rights movement is to go forward.” 

Still shaken from the Philadelphia debacle, King became convinced in Indianola that the Meredith March should divert to Meridian and then to Philadelphia, according to newspaper reports. 

National Director of the Congress for Racial Equality Floyd B. McKissick said in Indianola that a large segment of the march should have been diverted back to Neshoba County that week, according to the June 22, 1966 New York Times. 

King agreed to that.  

“We will use all our nonviolent might,” King was quoted as saying. He then lashed out again at Philadelphia. 

“We got to go back – it’s the meanest town in the country,” The Times reported as King saying during a strategy session with other civil rights leaders in Indianola. “If they get by with what they did today, Negroes will be scared to death.”

McKissick agreed, according to The Times, saying, “We can’t take this lying down.” 

The Times reported that McKissick suggested that the Meredith marchers be divided into two parts, “One going by truck to Meridian for a 41-mile march from there into Philadelphia along Route 19. The remaining marching column would continue on its way to Jackson by way of Canton.” 

“Sounds good,” King said in The Times. 

Like other press who had been present in Indianola on June 21, The Times reported zero violent incidents. The paper reported that about 350 Black people showed up for the rally, along with over 100 white people. The Times reported that many Blacks in the crowd started to chant “Black Power.” 

“But when the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, one of Dr. King’s top aides arrived at the rally, he also asked Negroes what they wanted,” The Times said. “When some yelled ‘black power,’ he commanded, ‘Say freedom.’” 

“Freedom,” the negroes shouted, according to The Times. When the rally ended, the crowd dispersed. 

“Police officials in this deep-Delta city said today that Negro leader Martin Luther King had left for Yazoo City without a single reported incident of violence,” the DD-T reported on June 22. 

Although a large group of King supporters gathered at Saint Benedict the Moor later that evening to hear King, he had already left town, arriving in Yazoo City, and by that time, ready to once again engage in fierce debate against the Black Power slogan.  

King rededicated himself there to nonviolence and publicly denounced the new Black Power movement.  

“Violence may bring about a temporary victory, but it can never bring about permanent peace,” King said in Yazoo, according to one newspaper report. “If we don’t use black power right, we will have black men with power who are just as evil as whites.” 

While the nation’s press reported in detail the contents of King’s speech in Indianola, this newspaper had little to say about it, other than a front-page editor’s note by then-editor Wallace Dabbs. 

Dabbs at first was snarky, making what seems to have been a deliberate attempt to not mention King’s name in the article. 

“The march brought out one important fact which all serious-minded people (in) this area should be aware of,” Dabbs wrote. “The fact is this: A person can walk to Sunflower faster than a letter can be mailed from Indianola to Sunflower. And it is also a fact that by walking the walker will arrive some 24 or so more hours sooner than the letter. This, of course, is not a slam at the Indianola postal employees. It’s just that mail mailed in Indianola has to go around the Delta twice before it heads north on 49. Ah – progress our most important product – zip code and all.” 

After the flip comment, Dabbs went on to praise the whites in Indianola for not being violent during the march. 

“Seriously, the people of Indianola and Sunflower County can be proud of the way they conducted themselves during the trying Tuesday,” the editor said. “(Through) efforts of local leaders and able law officers, a much undesired element of people were allowed to come in and put on a dubious show. It could have been the other way around. It could have easily turned into an incident of which the flavor could have lingered here for days and weeks to come. But it didn’t happen that way. And two bodies of officers, the Sunflower County Sheriff’s Department under the direction of Sheriff Bill Hollowell, and the Indianola Police department, under the direction of Police Chief Bryce Alexander, deserve a round of applause.” 

There are few other accounts of King’s speech in Indianola. 

The rally drew about half the crowd as the one in Philadelphia. First-hand stories are limited. The splintered nature of the Meredith March that day had divided the press corps between Philadelphia and Yazoo City. 

Most of what is known about the content of the speech comes from the Clarion Ledger, The Delta Democrat-Times, The New York Times and the wire news service reporters who were present. 

No known photographs, television film or audio exist of King during his visit to Indianola.  The speech is rarely spoken of in Civil Rights documentaries, perhaps overshadowed by the larger story in Neshoba County that day.  

On a day when one of the world’s most revered peacemakers was fighting wars on multiple fronts, one against the Klan in Philadelphia, and another against the Black Power movement in his own organization, Martin Luther King Jr. needed a quiet place to vent, calm down and regroup for the next battle. 

That venue was a humble pile of dirt in downtown Indianola. 

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by Bryan Davis, The Enterprise-Tocsin, Mississippi Today June 27, 2024

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Martin Luther King Jr.

By: History.com Editors

Updated: January 25, 2024 | Original: November 9, 2009

Martin Luther King Jr. was a social activist and Baptist minister who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. King sought equality and human rights for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and all victims of injustice through peaceful protest. He was the driving force behind watershed events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the 1963 March on Washington , which helped bring about such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act . King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is remembered each year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day , a U.S. federal holiday since 1986.

When Was Martin Luther King Born?

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia , the second child of Martin Luther King Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former schoolteacher.

Along with his older sister Christine and younger brother Alfred Daniel Williams, he grew up in the city’s Sweet Auburn neighborhood, then home to some of the most prominent and prosperous African Americans in the country.

Did you know? The final section of Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech is believed to have been largely improvised.

A gifted student, King attended segregated public schools and at the age of 15 was admitted to Morehouse College , the alma mater of both his father and maternal grandfather, where he studied medicine and law.

Although he had not intended to follow in his father’s footsteps by joining the ministry, he changed his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Benjamin Mays, an influential theologian and outspoken advocate for racial equality. After graduating in 1948, King entered Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his predominantly white senior class.

King then enrolled in a graduate program at Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning a doctorate in systematic theology two years later. While in Boston he met Coretta Scott, a young singer from Alabama who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music . The couple wed in 1953 and settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church .

The Kings had four children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King and Bernice Albertine King.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The King family had been living in Montgomery for less than a year when the highly segregated city became the epicenter of the burgeoning struggle for civil rights in America, galvanized by the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks , secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ), refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a bus boycott that would continue for 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Boycott placed a severe economic strain on the public transit system and downtown business owners. They chose Martin Luther King Jr. as the protest’s leader and official spokesman.

By the time the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating on public buses unconstitutional in November 1956, King—heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and the activist Bayard Rustin —had entered the national spotlight as an inspirational proponent of organized, nonviolent resistance.

King had also become a target for white supremacists, who firebombed his family home that January.

On September 20, 1958, Izola Ware Curry walked into a Harlem department store where King was signing books and asked, “Are you Martin Luther King?” When he replied “yes,” she stabbed him in the chest with a knife. King survived, and the attempted assassination only reinforced his dedication to nonviolence: “The experience of these last few days has deepened my faith in the relevance of the spirit of nonviolence if necessary social change is peacefully to take place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Emboldened by the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in 1957 he and other civil rights activists—most of them fellow ministers—founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group committed to achieving full equality for African Americans through nonviolent protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed.” King would remain at the helm of this influential organization until his death.

In his role as SCLC president, Martin Luther King Jr. traveled across the country and around the world, giving lectures on nonviolent protest and civil rights as well as meeting with religious figures, activists and political leaders.

During a month-long trip to India in 1959, he had the opportunity to meet family members and followers of Gandhi, the man he described in his autobiography as “the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social change.” King also authored several books and articles during this time.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In 1960 King and his family moved to Atlanta, his native city, where he joined his father as co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church . This new position did not stop King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players in many of the most significant civil rights battles of the 1960s.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a particularly severe test during the Birmingham campaign of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins and marches to protest segregation, unfair hiring practices and other injustices in one of America’s most racially divided cities.

Arrested for his involvement on April 12, King penned the civil rights manifesto known as the “ Letter from Birmingham Jail ,” an eloquent defense of civil disobedience addressed to a group of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.

March on Washington

Later that year, Martin Luther King Jr. worked with a number of civil rights and religious groups to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a peaceful political rally designed to shed light on the injustices Black Americans continued to face across the country.

Held on August 28 and attended by some 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event is widely regarded as a watershed moment in the history of the American civil rights movement and a factor in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 .

"I Have a Dream" Speech

The March on Washington culminated in King’s most famous address, known as the “I Have a Dream” speech, a spirited call for peace and equality that many consider a masterpiece of rhetoric.

Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial —a monument to the president who a century earlier had brought down the institution of slavery in the United States—he shared his vision of a future in which “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.'”

The speech and march cemented King’s reputation at home and abroad; later that year he was named “Man of the Year” by TIME magazine and in 1964 became, at the time, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize .

In the spring of 1965, King’s elevated profile drew international attention to the violence that erupted between white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where the SCLC and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had organized a voter registration campaign.

Captured on television, the brutal scene outraged many Americans and inspired supporters from across the country to gather in Alabama and take part in the Selma to Montgomery march led by King and supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson , who sent in federal troops to keep the peace.

That August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act , which guaranteed the right to vote—first awarded by the 15th Amendment—to all African Americans.

Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

The events in Selma deepened a growing rift between Martin Luther King Jr. and young radicals who repudiated his nonviolent methods and commitment to working within the established political framework.

As more militant Black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael rose to prominence, King broadened the scope of his activism to address issues such as the Vietnam War and poverty among Americans of all races. In 1967, King and the SCLC embarked on an ambitious program known as the Poor People’s Campaign, which was to include a massive march on the capital.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated . He was fatally shot while standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, where King had traveled to support a sanitation workers’ strike. In the wake of his death, a wave of riots swept major cities across the country, while President Johnson declared a national day of mourning.

James Earl Ray , an escaped convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained some unlikely advocates, including members of the King family, before his death in 1998.

After years of campaigning by activists, members of Congress and Coretta Scott King, among others, in 1983 President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a U.S. federal holiday in honor of King.

Observed on the third Monday of January, Martin Luther King Day was first celebrated in 1986.

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

While his “I Have a Dream” speech is the most well-known piece of his writing, Martin Luther King Jr. was the author of multiple books, include “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” “Why We Can’t Wait,” “Strength to Love,” “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” and the posthumously published “Trumpet of Conscience” with a foreword by Coretta Scott King. Here are some of the most famous Martin Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

“The time is always right to do what is right.”

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice."

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

“Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.”

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.”

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

“Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail. If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.”

“Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?’”

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9 Detroit events that went down in American history

From the growth of the labor movement to high-profile sports scandals to assisted suicides and shocking true crime, news stories from Detroit have written themselves into recent American history.

Some of the stories, among a certain age group, still spark discussion around the dinner table today. There are unsolved mysteries: Who killed Jimmy Hoffa and what did they do with his remains? There are unresolved controversies: Should assisted suicide be legal as Michigan's Dr. Jack Kevorkian advocated and carried out?

But recent conversations in the community have shown that a large group of people — some younger residents and newer residents — have no idea who Hoffa or Kevorkian were and why they matter. Your 22-year-old niece or nephew was not even born when 9/11 happened. So if they don't remember arguably the nation's biggest news story this century, they certainly do not know about some of Detroit's biggest stories of the last several decades.

But these stories are key to the nation's and Detroit's history. So here's a quick look at a few of those stories.

A union boss vanishes

Jimmy Hoffa is missing.

Those four words, stretched across the entire front page of the Aug. 1, 1975, edition of the Detroit Free Press, marked the beginning of a mystery that has never been solved.

Hoffa served as president of the Teamsters Union from 1957 to 1971. He was last seen outside a Bloomfield Township restaurant where he was scheduled to meet two mobsters for what he thought was a reconciliation meeting.

The mobsters didn’t show up and Hoffa was never seen again. His disappearance prompted countless leads and even more conspiracy theories.

Hoffa had a checkered history.

He was revered by many union members for his organizing savvy and bare-knuckled negotiating success. But he also drew attention from the law.

At a federal trial in Tennessee in the 1960s, Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering and fraud, earning a 13-year prison sentence. President Richard Nixon later commuted Hoffa’s sentence, after he’d served almost five years.

By 1975, Hoffa was angling to get back into the Teamsters leadership.

The main theory investigators pursued was that the Mafia killed Hoffa to prevent him from disclosing mob infiltration of the Teamsters, including its tapping into the union's pension fund to finance its rackets.

But no one was ever charged with his death.

Over the years, the FBI and other law enforcement conducted dozens of searches for Hoffa’s remains. Whenever word leaked that one was taking place, the search sites would become spectacles, with gawkers peering over the police tape, helicopters circling above and TV satellite trucks parked nearby.

One main suspect was Charles “Chuckie” O’Brien, a man said to be like a son to Hoffa. Witnesses described seeing Hoffa get into a car outside the restaurant. Investigators theorized O’Brien was driving. 

He denied any involvement and died in 2020, taking to his grave whatever secrets he may have known.

— John Wisely

Martin Luther King Jr. first told of his dream in Detroit

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke often in Detroit and, in 1963, led a massive march for civil rights down Woodward Avenue. That June 23, more than 125,000 people marched with King in what was the nation's largest civil rights march up to that time.

Later that summer, he delivered his most famous speech during the massive civil rights rally from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In Detroit, he previewed the "Dream" speech at the conclusion of the Woodward march.

"So this afternoon, I have a dream.

"It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

"I have a dream that one day right down in Georgia, in Mississippi, in Alabama, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to live together as brothers. ...

"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 and not the color of their skin. ...

"I have a dream this evening that one day we will recognize the words of Jefferson that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit for happiness. ...

"I have a dream this afternoon that the brotherhood of man will become a reality in this day ... with this faith we will be able to achieve this new 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 with the Negro in the spiritual of old, 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last.' "

— Detroit Almanac

Misplaced anger leaves a man dead

On June 19, 1982, 27-year-old Vincent Chin was enjoying a night out at what was then the Fancy Pants strip club on Woodward Avenue in Highland Park. He and friends were celebrating ahead of his upcoming wedding. But what would happen next would spark national outrage and a movement for pan-Asian rights that continues today .

On that night, also at Fancy Pants were then-43-year-old Chrysler foreman Ronald Ebens and his 22-year-old stepson Michael Nitz, who had recently been laid off by Chrysler. At this time, the Motor City was struggling as Americans' tastes in cars had shifted to smaller, fuel-efficient Japanese cars. With American automakers losing sales to the Japanese, workers were losing jobs.

According to www.history.com , an argument started between the groups of men over a stripper. A dancer at the club said Ebens then shouted at Chin, “It’s because of you motherf***ers that we’re out of work.” Ebens and Nitz targeted Chin because they thought he was Japanese. He was actually Chinese-American and did not even work in the auto industry.

The dispute moved outside where Ebens grabbed a baseball bat from his car and began chasing Chin, who ran away. Ebens and Nitz drove around for about 20 minutes looking for Chin and when they found him, Nitz held Chin while Ebens hit him again, and again, and again with the baseball bat. Chin was declared brain dead at Henry Ford Hospital and died on June 23rd, 1982. His funeral was June 29, the day after what was supposed to be his wedding day.

Initially the brutal killing was a local story, but after the judge's light sentencing of Ebens and Nitz, it drew national attention and outrage. According to the Asian American Pacific Islander Resource Center at the University of New Mexico , Ebens and Nitz were originally charged with second-degree murder. The charge was brought down to manslaughter through a plea bargain and each man was sentenced by Judge Charles Kaufman to 3 years of probation and fined $3,000. They did not get any jail time. In defense of this ruling, Judge Kaufman said, “These weren't the kind of men you send to jail ... You don't make the punishment fit the crime; you make the punishment fit the criminal."

More: Landmark 'Who Killed Vincent Chin?' documentary airs on PBS as part of 40-year remembrances

The U.S. District Court sentenced Ebens to 25 years in prison for violating Chin’s civil rights in 1984. But in 1987 Ebens appealed and he got a retrial that cleared him of all charges. That same year, Ebens and Nitz settled a civil suit where Nitz was ordered to pay $50,000 to the Chin estate over 10 years, which he did. Ebens was ordered to pay $1.5 million. As of 2015, reports said it remains unpaid and has grown to about $8 million from accumulated interest over the decades.

— Jamie L. LaReau

An eight-year assisted suicide campaign

On a winter’s morning in early 1990, a gnomish man in his early 60s came to the Free Press building in downtown Detroit seeking to place a classified ad. 

The proposed ad invited people suffering from a terminal illness or chronic pain to try out a device that promised to end a despondent patient’s life painlessly and efficiently via the injection of chemicals that would anesthetize the subject before stopping his or her heart.

The device’s inventor was a retired pathologist named Jack Kevorkian. The Free Press declined to publish Kevorkian’s proposed classified, but a reader ombudsman summoned to soothe the disappointed Kevorkian alerted Free Press columnist Neal Rubin , and Rubin’s column detailing Kevorkian’s then-nascent campaign to promote physician-assisted suicide appeared in the Free Press on March 18.

Less than three months later, Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old Oregon woman diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, become the first person to end her life with the device Kevorkian called the Thanatron. It was the beginning of an eight-year crusade in which Kevorkian would claim to have helped 130 patients end their lives.

Kevorkian’s efforts to gain acceptance for euthanasia triggered a massive pushback from a coalition of opponents that included law enforcement authorities, religious leaders and advocates for the disabled. An Oakland County judge dismissed criminal charges against Kevorkian in Adkins' death, ruling that nothing in state or federal law prohibited the assistance he provided. But Michigan quickly revoked his license to practice medicine, making it more difficult for him to obtain the controlled substances he used. Four more criminal prosecutions followed in the next seven years, each of which ended in an acquittal or mistrial.

In 1997, the Free Press published the results of an investigation into the 47 suicides Kevorian was then known to have assisted. Reporters found that, contrary to his assertions, most of the patients Kevorkian assisted had not been terminally ill, and fewer than half had complained of chronic pain. Autopsy results revealed that five assisted suicide patients had exhibited no evidence of any disease, and The Economist concluded that some whose suicides Kevorkian had assisted had likely “suffered from no more than hypochondria or depression.”

Kevorkian’s crusade — and his undefeated record in criminal prosecutions — ended abruptly in 1998, when he was charged murder in the death of Thomas Youk. Unlike Kevorkian’s previous assisted suicide patients, Youk, who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease, was physically unable to operate the Thanatron. So Kevorkian administered the lethal injection himself and provided a videotape documenting Youk’s death to CBS’s “60 Minutes.” A unanimous Oakland County jury convicted Kevorkian of second-degree murder, and he was sentenced to 10-25 years in prison, although then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm freed him after he had served only eight years. 

Kevorkian died at 83 years of age in June 2011, four years after he was paroled. Today physician-assisted suicide is legal in 10 states (not including Michigan) and the District of Columbia.

— Brian Dickerson, special to the Free Press

A disgraced mayor goes to prison

The scandal began in January 2008, when the Detroit Free Press published excerpts of text messages exchanged between Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Christine Beatty, his chief of staff, on city-issued paging devices. The messages showed he and Beatty lied under oath during a police whistleblower trial. Their messages contradicted their testimony that they did not have a sexual relationship and showed they gave misleading statements about the firing of a deputy police chief, Gary Brown.

Perhaps even more explosive, however, was a secret deal the newspaper unearthed in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that Kilpatrick fought all the way to the state Supreme Court. The newspaper won access to a settlement agreement that showed Kilpatrick approved a deal in the whistleblower suit with Brown and two other ex-cops who sued him. In it, Kilpatrick agreed to pay the ex-cops $8.4 million, in part because they had obtained transcripts of his incriminating text messages. The ex-cops agreed to turn them over to the mayor and never speak of them again.

Despite the deal, the Free Press obtained copies of the messages and published excerpts with a story on the front page.

Kilpatrick fled the city to his Florida home and returned several days later for a televised apology from his church, with his wife at his side. "I would never quit on you. Ever," the mayor told Detroiters.

In March, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy announced a 12-count complaint charging perjury, conspiracy to obstruct justice, obstruction of justice and misconduct in office against Kilpatrick and Beatty, who announced her resignation in January.

As part of a plea deal that followed months of tumult, Kilpatrick resigned in September 2008. The other terms included a sentence of four months in jail, a forfeiture of his law license and his pension from the state Legislature, a promise to pay up to $1 million in restitution and to serve five years of probation. Beatty cut her own deal and also went to jail.

Years later, Kilpatrick was indicted in a wide-ranging corruption scandal that included other allegations raised over the years in the Free Press. A judge locked him up for 28 years — one of the stiffest public corruption sentences in U.S. history.

In 2021, Kilpatrick was freed 20 years early after then-President Donald Trump granted him an early release, concluding he had paid his debt to society.

— Free Press archives

An Olympic kneecapping

“No ... Why me? Why now?”

Those were the anguished words of Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan after a large man in a black leather coat ran toward her from behind and whacked her right knee with a metal baton. The assault, which took place in a Cobo Arena hallway on Jan. 6, 1994, was one of the most dramatic sports stories of the century, and it made headlines around the world for weeks.

Kerrigan was considered a gold-medal favorite in the upcoming Olympics.

Soon, Detroit police turned up information that associates of one of Kerrigan’s chief rivals, Tonya Harding, had plotted the crime. Before long, Harding’s ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, was charged with planning and bankrolling the attack, and three of his friends confessed to being involved.

At the Olympics, the rehabilitated Kerrigan skated, as did the out-of-shape Harding. Kerrigan won a silver medal. Harding failed to place. After the Olympics, Harding pleaded guilty to hindering prosecution and was fined $100,000, sentenced to 500 hours of community service and banned for life by the U.S. Figure Skating Association. Kerrigan went on to become a millionaire skater.

Detroit's troubled summer of 1967

Police raided a private club above a print shop on the east side of 12th Street south of Clairmount about an hour before daylight on July 23, 1967. The club called itself the United Civic League for Community Action. But its action was dispensing booze after 2 a.m. In Detroit parlance, it was a blind pig.

A crowd formed as police brought the 82 arrested out of the second-story speakeasy. Someone hurled a brick that smashed the rear window of a police cruiser. Soon, rioters began overwhelming cops at the scene. Reinforcements were few because so many officers were on vacation. There were 193 police officers patrolling the entire city when the riot began.

Rioting and looting spread along 12th Street, then to 14th, Linwood, Dexter and Grand River. By evening, rioting broke out on the east side near Van Dyke and Mack. Gov. George Romney activated the National Guard to help Detroit police and state police, but the guardsmen were poorly trained for quelling urban disturbances. They often overreacted, leading to needless deaths and injuries. Finally, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered U.S. Army paratroopers from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions to Detroit. By Friday, 4,400 Detroit police, 8,000 National Guardsmen, 4,700 federal troops and 360 state police were patrolling Detroit. Order was restored.

A deep polarization between races grew out of that riot, even though it was not a race riot. In fact, the first person killed was a white looter, Walter Grzanka, 45. He was shot by the owner of a market on Fourth Street.

The Kerner Commission, formed by Johnson after the Detroit disturbance and similar events in other U.S. cities, warned of impoverished central cities surrounded by affluent, white suburbs. The commission reported that "white racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II ... What white Americans have never fully understood — but what the Black can never forget, is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it and white society condones it."

Of course Harry Houdini died on Halloween

He escaped from chains, manacles and straitjackets. But he could not beat death. The great magician Harry Houdini died in Detroit on Halloween 1926.

Over the years, Detroiters had watched Houdini break free from handcuffs as he hung by his feet in Grand Circus Park and escape from a sealed trunk at the bottom of the Detroit River.

In what turned out to his last appearance, Houdini collapsed at Detroit’s Garrick Theater after his opening-night show. The crowd didn’t know it, but Houdini was suffering from being punched in the stomach by a fan three days earlier in Montreal in a test of the magician’s strength. After his collapse, Houdini was taken to Grace Hospital, where doctors removed his ruptured appendix. But poison had seeped into his bloodstream and he died three days later, at 1:26 p.m. Oct. 31. His brother, Theo, and wife, Bess, were at his bedside. Houdini’s last words: “Rosabelle, believe,” a reference to a song he and his wife enjoyed.

He had been staying at the Statler Hotel at Washington and Park Avenue, site of the new City Club Apartments, and he died at Grace Hospital, at the site of today's Detroit Medical Center.

A doubling of wages boosted the middle class

Henry Ford announced in January 1914 that he would double the rate of pay for workers at his Highland Park plant from $2.50 to $5 a day. Ford had introduced a full assembly line at the new factory to build Model Ts. It was stunning news, but came with caveats:

• Workers had to apply for the raise.
• Women were ineligible.
• No one younger than 22 was eligible unless he was a breadwinner.
• Workers had to submit to a probe of their private lives. Ford rewarded thrift, sobriety and cleanliness. Ford investigators reviewed personal financial information and visited the workers’ homes. They also interviewed neighbors and friends. In some cases, the investigators took photos of the workers’ dwellings, inside and out.
• Requirements for the $5 wage included: Six months’ residency in Detroit and six months’ experience at Ford.

Ford introduced the $5-a-day pay in part because of high turnover. The speed of the line and working conditions are issues that never went away. In Highland Park in 1916, the Ford plant alone recorded 192 severed fingers, 68,000 lacerations, 5,400 burns and 2,600 puncture wounds, according to the Detroit Historical Museum.

Forrest Gump turns 30: Five things to know about classic Tom Hanks film

The iconic film "Forrest Gump" premiered 30 years ago, with a story that includes strong ties to Tuscaloosa and the University of Alabama.

The character was conceived by Winston Groom, one of the Crimson Tide's biggest fans and historians, who wrote the novel the movie was — rather loosely — based on.

Here's five things to know about Gump and the movie that him famous:

Was Forrest Gump's author snubbed at the Oscars?

At the 1995 Academy Awards ceremony, 1994 blockbuster "Forrest Gump" won six Oscars, including Best Actor for Tom Hanks, Best Supporting Actor for Gary Sinise, Best Director for Robert Zemeckis, Best Picture, and best adapted screenplay for Eric Roth, yet none of the many who appeared on stage to take credit for its success so much as hinted at Winston Groom.

Groom, the Alabama-raised University of Alabama graduate, and Alabama Writers Hall of Fame member, created the slow-thinking, action-forward character for his 1986 novel of the same name.

How much money did the 'Forrest Gump' make?

Groom, who died in 2020 at his Fairhope home, engaged in various tangled legal disputes with Paramount Pictures, which claimed, by its accounting, that the $678 million earned in initial release (not adding in later tape/DVD sales and other revenue streams) did not amount to a profit.

More: A look at Forrest Gump's (totally fictional) University of Alabama football career

Hollywood figuring: The movie cost about $55 million to make, only that high largely because of Zemeckis' reliance on special effects to insert Hanks into various historical scenes, including Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace's infamous Stand in the Schoolhouse Door , which happened June 11, 1963, on the UA campus.

Was 'Forrest Gump' filmed in Alabama?

Gump attends college as "a idiot," with an IQ about 75, and in the novel he's a muscular 6-foot, 6-inch, 242 pound man instead of Hollywood's gangly Hanks-sized runner. Although the college Gump attends isn't directly identified in either the book or the movie, the school is clearly meant to be UA, with red (not crimson) uniforms, and called "the state university," which was led in the early '60s by legendary coach Paul W. "Bear" Bryant.

The Capstone didn't allow Paramount to film here, due to what it perceived as historical inaccuracies in early versions of the script, partly that UA would admit someone unable to meet basic academic standards, based on mere athletic ability. UA denied use of its name, logos or colors, though the filmmakers must have felt pretty sly, costuming actor Sonny Shroyer in a sort-of houndstooth hat.

The state of Alabama followed suit, shutting out Paramount. Though much of the movie took place in Alabama — including Gump's fictional hometown of Greenbow, and in non-fictional Bayou La Batre, where Forrest and Lt. Dan establish a shrimping business — it was filmed in the Carolinas, Georgia, Maine, Arizona, Utah and Montana. Campus scenes were shot mainly in Los Angeles, at the University of Southern California.

More: Two decades of 'Forrest Gump': Author Winston Groom didn't foresee enduring popularity of novel, movie

Groom tried, unsuccessfully, to make arrogant filmmakers understand: "I told them that the University of Alabama, believe it or not, is bigger than Paramount Pictures." Though some of the script issues were scratched, UA still balked.

"I was proud of my alma mater for telling them to go to hell," Groom said.

Did Forrest Gump play football for Alabama?

Speaking of fictional, many viewers were apparently dazzled by effects that seemed to place Gump at the Stand in the Schoolhouse Door or with John Lennon on Dick Cavett's talk show or near the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during his "I Have a Dream" speech, and shaking hands with President John F. Kennedy. Some seemed to believe Forrest Gump was a real person.

How do we know? For decades, visitors to the Paul W. Bryant Museum on the UA campus have asked to see Gump's Crimson Tide playing records. Ken Gaddy, its longtime director who retired in 2021, spent many long hours patiently explaining how, no matter how deep a dive into the museum's voluminous records, neither young Tom Hanks, nor Groom's wilder, more R-rated Gump, can be found there.

“They think you’re hiding something,” Gaddy said.

Can you find Forrest Gump in Tuscaloosa?

Though Forrest cannot be found in archives — except as a footnote about those who don't understand fiction from non- — he can sometimes be seen in and around Tuscaloosa on Alabama football game days, in the form of a jogger who dresses to resemble mid-film Tom Hanks, who grows his hair and beard out while on seemingly endless cross-country runs.

Up and down University Boulevard, through The Strip and past Bryant-Denny Stadium, "Forrest" runs by in red shorts, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. cap, and lush, flowing locks that may not be real. He appeared as games slowly returned during the pandemic, after Crimson Tide championships, and more, and will say hello to folks in passing, but prefers to remain enigmatic, ever on the run.

The Tuscaloosa News first spotted jogging Forrest in fall 2020 ; it may have been intended in part as tribute to Groom, who had died just weeks before, at 77, as well as a spirit-lifter for fans. The old UA Fan Days, in which the avid sprinted across turf to get autographs from then-coach Nick Saban and players, was informally and lovingly known as the "Running of the Gumps."

Visit Tuscaloosa's Bill Buchanan invoked running Forrest in a published open letter to Sally Field, the actor who played young Forrest's mom — and in heavy age makeup, as Hanks' Gump's mom — after she made an untoward crack about how, had she not become an actress, she may have instead been a "... really, really unhappy overweight person somewhere deep in Tuscaloosa." As Buchanan underlined, stardom or depressed obesity are not the Druid City's only options.

Reach Mark Hughes Cobb at [email protected].