Martin
Luther
King,
Jr.
I Have a Dream
delivered
28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.
[AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio.
(2)]
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 an exile in his own land. And 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 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, insofar
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’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.
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.
And 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
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 plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative
protest 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 reali
