I Can Believe That I Can Be Happy Summer Will Come Again
M artin L uther K ing , J r .
I Have a Dream
delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.
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[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 sit-in for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years agone, a neat American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand up today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous prescript came as a not bad beacon light of promise to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. Information technology came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
Simply one hundred years afterward, the Negro still is not free. 1 hundred years subsequently, the life of the Negro is withal sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years subsequently, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast sea of cloth prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is nonetheless languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his ain country. And then nosotros've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come up to our nation's uppercase 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 autumn heir. This note was a hope that all men, yep, black men likewise as white men, would exist 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 depository financial institution of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the smashing vaults of opportunity of this nation. And and then, we've come to cash this bank check, a check that will give u.s.a. upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
Nosotros have also come up to this hallowed spot to remind America of the violent 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 rising from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. At present is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid stone of brotherhood. Now is the time to brand justice a reality for all of God'due south children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summertime of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 19 threescore-3 is not an end, just a beginning. And those who promise that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content volition have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business organization as usual. And there volition exist neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of defection will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright mean solar day of justice emerges.
Simply 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 procedure of gaining our rightful place, nosotros must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Allow united states 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 airplane of dignity and discipline. We must not let our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of coming together physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not pb u.s.a. to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence hither today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come up to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, nosotros must brand the pledge that we shall ever march ahead.
Nosotros cannot plough back.
There are those who are request the devotees of civil rights, "When will you exist satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We tin can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot proceeds lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. ** Nosotros cannot exist satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger ane. Nosotros tin never be satisfied as long every bit our children are stripped of their cocky-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites But." ** We cannot be satisfied as long every bit a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has zippo for which to vote. No, no, nosotros are not satisfied, and we volition non be satisfied until "justice rolls down similar waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream." 1
I am not unmindful that some of you lot have come here out of slap-up trials and tribulations. Some of you accept come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of yous have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered past the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of constabulary brutality. Y'all take been the veterans of artistic suffering. Keep to work with the religion that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, become dorsum to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, become back to Louisiana, become back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation tin and will be changed.
Permit us non wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though nosotros face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I yet take a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that 1 day this nation will ascent up and live out the true pregnant of its creed: "We hold these truths to be cocky-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that ane day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will exist able to sit downwardly together at the table of brotherhood.
I take 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 accept a dream that my four lilliputian children volition i day alive in a nation where they volition non be judged by the color of their pare but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, d o wn in Alabama, with its savage racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one twenty-four hours right there in Alabama little black boys and blackness girls will be able to join easily with trivial white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I take a dream today!
I have a dream that i twenty-four hours every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made depression, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places volition exist made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall exist revealed and all flesh shall encounter information technology together." two
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I get dorsum to the S with.
With this religion, we volition exist able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this organized religion, nosotros will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this religion, we will exist able to piece of work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to become to jail together, to stand upward for freedom together, knowing that we will be complimentary one day.
And this will be the 24-hour interval -- this will be the twenty-four hour period when all of God's children will exist able to sing with new meaning:
My land 'tis of thee, sweet state of freedom, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, From every mountainside, let liberty ring!
And if America is to exist a great nation, this must become truthful.
And so permit liberty band from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Permit liberty ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Permit 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 Watch Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, allow freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we allow it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every land 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 onetime Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Gratis at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are costless at last! 3
** = Source sound edited to exclude the content in double cherry-red asterisks in the above transcript.
i Amos 5:24 (rendered precisely in The American Standard Version of the Holy Bible)
two Isaiah forty:4-v (King James Version of the Holy Bible). Quotation marks are excluded from part of this moment in the text because King's rendering of Isaiah 40:iv does non precisely follow the KJV version from which he quotes (e.g., "hill" and "mountain" are reversed in the KJV). Rex's rendering of Isaiah 40:5, however, is precisely quoted from the KJV.
iii At: http://www.negrospirituals.com/news-song/free_at_last_from.htm
Too in this database: Martin Luther King, Jr: A Fourth dimension to Break Silence
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