Today is the 49th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech

[Tx4obama]

"I Have a Dream" is a 17-minute public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered on August 28, 1963, in which he called for racial equality and an end to discrimination. The speech, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement. Delivered to over 200,000 civil rights supporters,[1] the speech was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address.[2] According to U.S. Representative John Lewis, who also spoke that day as the President of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, "Dr. King had the power, the ability, and the capacity to transform those steps on the Lincoln Memorial into a monumental area that will forever be recognized. By speaking the way he did, he educated, he inspired, he informed not just the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations."[3]

At the end of the speech, King departed from his prepared text for a partly improvised peroration on the theme of "I have a dream", possibly prompted by Mahalia Jackson's cry, "Tell them about the dream, Martin!"[4] He had first delivered a speech incorporating some of the same sections in Detroit in June 1963, when he marched on Woodward Avenue with Walter Reuther and the Reverend C. L. Franklin, and had rehearsed other parts.[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream

Video of the FULL speech below:

[freshwest]

1. My soul is still as uplited listening to this as much I did the first time.

And I always cry when I hear his voice...

He was taken from us much too soon.

[vlyons]

2. Where were you when this speech was delivered?

I was home and got to see it on TV. It was my pre-soph highschool yr. A Dallas segregated school. My parents didn't know about it and never discussed it with me. But it was this speech that first clicked in my mind that black people deserved to be treated fairly like everyone else. Thank-you Martin for moving my young heart.

[Tx4obama]

3. I was four years old at the time, I was probably at home but do not remember seeing it back then

But I do remember, the same year, watching John F. Kennedy's funeral on TV with my grandmother.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Damn...that long ago?

Time is fleeting....
Really does seem like yesterday, truly.

[Diclotican]

5. Tx4obama

Tx4obama

I was not born when Dr Martin Luther King jr had his speech - but I do know it, if not by heart, at least I know the history back it (for the most part) and I also know that Mr King was killed just mounts after this speech, who might as well is one of the most important he ever hold...

He was a great man.

Diclotican

[elbloggoZY27]

6. Dr King

What a great day that was.

History unfortunately has really become ugly since the assassinations of the Kennedy's and Dr King. Oh1 how the United States would have been had these men lived. They were real thinkers and stand way taller by light years to the very ugliness our current society has become.

"I Have A Dream".


We now have a nightmare.

[Tx4obama]

7. President Obama added a Martin Luther King,Jr. bust to the Oval Office in 2009, photos below

SIDE VIEW and info regarding the artist here: http://www.charlottedispatch.com/2012/01/the-charlotte-born-artist-whose-sculpture-was-the-first-image-of-black-people-in-the-white-house/