1.

Biography
Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later
had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the
Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until
the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended
segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received
the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from
which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer
Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior
class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate
studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the
degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon
intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family . In 1954,

Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in
Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his
race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading
organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December,
1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration
of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar
Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382
days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had
declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and
whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested,
his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time
he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.
In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now
burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from
Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period
between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over
twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and
action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these
years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the
attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience.
and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro
revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as
voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to
whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President
John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was
arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was
awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in
1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a
world figure.
At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have
received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that

he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil
rights movement.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room
in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with
striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.
Martin Luther King Jr. - Biography". Nobelprize.org

2. What makes this speech one of the most famous in

history?
As one of the most shining examples of commanding rhetoric, ABC News delved into five
reasons that made King's speech one of the most famous in history.
'Five Score Years Ago'
In the speech, King incorporated quotations from patriotic and religious documents to put the
struggle of racial inequality "in the context of the great principles of American history," said
Keith Miller, an associate professor of English at Arizona State University, whose research
focuses on the rhetoric and songs of the civil rights movement.
King pulled phrases from the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation
and even the song "America (My Country, 'Tis of Thee)" to drive his points home, Miller said.
"He's appealing to the most sacred touchstones that there are in the United States," he told
ABCNews.com. "He's incorporating these other voices that are more or less unimpeachable."
"He's saying, 'Hey, this is the rhetoric upon which our country was founded,' Kennerson-Baty
said. "These political documents were forged so that we have a system of sustainability that
outlined humanity, but also the political rights that have been given to all of God's children."
These historic documents come alive throughout the course of King's speech. In a way, he
appropriated the texts to begin writing a new chapter in history, said Taj Frazier, an associate
professor of communication at the University of Southern California.
"His ability to appropriate these historic analogies or phrases really spoke to his ability to
utilize history and make [these themes] applicable to that particular moment," Frazier said.
'Exile in His Own Land'
But even as King adapted the words of weighty historical texts, he also drew from the Bible in
the "Dream" speech, focusing particularly on the tales that mirrored the political climate of
the 1960s.
Miller said that King used the Bible and especially the books of Exodus, Isaiah and Amos to
chart the course of the civil rights movement in many of his speeches. The "Dream" speech
was no exception.

"The country, especially at this time, was very Judeo-Christian. The Bible is this very, very
authoritative document in the minds of millions and millions of people," Miller said. "King is
using the Bible to argue against segregation."
"He tries to cast it in the arc of this great historical narrative and elevate the American civil
rights movement to parallel Exodus," Miller said of the speech's scriptural leanings. "So [the
speech] is a revamping of Exodus, or a later chapter of the Exodus."
Kennerson-Baty said King's religious emphasis, likely derived from his training as a minister,
"transcends the dirt roads of the Southern, black, Baptist church" to resound on a national
scale.
"The commentary of the time marked King as the Moses that would bring this generation of
people fighting for civil rights," she said. "It makes you connect, not just on a socio-political
level, but also a spiritual level. That's the strongest cross-cultural element of the speech."
'We Can Never Be Satisfied'
King also used traditional rhetorical devices that enhanced the power of his words -particularly his use of repetition, which highlighted the points he wanted to resonate with
audiences, according to Kennerson-Baty.
"If you think about it -- the average attention span of any adult person is probably a good 10
to 15 minutes. The speech wasn't much longer than that," she said.
Most people may be most familiar with King repeating "I have a dream" during the speech,
but it isn't the only phrase he consistently hammered upon. He made the audience aware he is
on the National Mall "100 years" after Lincoln stood before him, and that his message was to
"let freedom ring."
Miller said King's speech was marked with repetition, rhymes and parallelism to make it
easier for both the speaker and the audience to remember.
"It also helps to build the cadence in his delivery," he said. "It's easier for people to follow,
and you become more rhythmical and emphatic."
But both Kennerson-Baty and Miller agreed that King's repetitiveness also came from his
religious background.
"Repetition comes out of preaching that started from slavery," Miller said. "Most slaves were
forbidden by law to read or write. If you were a slave, you had to pick up religion from
sermons and songs. If you were a preacher, you had to remember the sermon yourself and
wanted everyone in the audience to remember it, too."
"The preacher's orontundity of this speech, it takes it back to religiosity," Kennerson-Baty
said. "It speaks to people who look like him, have similar experiences at the church. You have
a responsibility as a speaker to use language that connects with the human experience."
'Let Freedom Ring'

Not only do King's words stand alone, but the way in which he delivered them merited
recognition.
"The 'I Have a Dream' speech is iconic as his identity," Kennerson-Baty said. "He put his
mind, his soul, this movement where his mouth was. This is beyond rhetoric."
But Miller was quick to shoot down allegations King extemporized the speech in the
shadow of Abraham Lincoln 50 years ago.
"Nobody would try to extemporize on that occasion -- 250,000 people on the National
Mall watching you. The whole country, the whole world watching you on TV," he said.
"African-American orators didn't get opportunities like this every day. To try to depend on
immediate inspiration would be foolish."
Instead, Miller said it was likely King had the lines of his speech pretty close to
memorized, which was why he commanded the throngs.
"That's why his delivery always sounds so good: He's got the lines memorized or close to
memorized," he said. "He's kind of like an actor in a play. The actor is not thinking about
the lines -- the actor has memorized the lines, the actor is only thinking about the
delivery."

By ALEXIS SHAW via WORLD NEWS, Aug. 27, 2013

3. The anatomy of an inspiring

speaker
1)

Rock solid, unshakeable confidence

You can see from Martin Luther Kings body language that he was calm and grounded as he
delivered his speech. Although you cant see his feet as hes speaking, Id imagine him to be
heavily planted to the ground, with a solid posture that says Here I am. Im not budging.
Now, you come to me.
As a speaker, Martin Luther King had the solidity that is surely only found with those who
have completely aligned their actions with their firm commitment. The 200,000 people at the
Washington rally could not have pushed King off-track if theyd tried, so solid was he in his
convictions. Self-belief from a beyond-personal source gives this sort of power and you can
see the impact.

2)

The Voice

It would always take a commanding voice to inspire thousands and Martin Luther Kings
booming voice was well practiced in his capacity as a Baptist preacher. His cadence, his
pacing and his preacher-like drama bring real passion to the speech.
Martin Luther King used powerful, evocative language to draw emotional connection to his
audience, such as:
Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of
racial justice.
This sweltering summer of the Negros legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an
invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
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

3)

Rhythm & Repetition

The intensity of Kings speech is built through bold statements and rhythmic repetition. Each
repetition builds on the one before and is reinforced by Martin Luther Kings ever increasing
passion.
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 negros basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger
one.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina
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.
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.

As the speech comes to a close the pace of Martin Luther Kings repetition increases, helping
to build to a crescendo.
4)

Ditching the Script

If that wasnt dramatic enough, Martin Luther Kings I have a dream speech was never
meant to even include its most famous sequence and climax. Originally penned under several
names, such as the catchy normalcy speech and A Cancelled check, King put aside his
script ten minutes into the speech. Few would dare risk it at such a moment, but King was
said to have responded to the cry of Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson Tell em about the
dream, Martin! and ad-libbed what came next. This is what gave I have a dream its raw
power and edge King was living the words that he spoke.

5)

With, not at his people

Its thought that King ditched the script so that he could connect more with his audience. And
it worked. I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and
tribulations, he begins. King goes on to talk to his audience and their personal situations
directly, 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.
King is with the people, fully connecting to them with his eyes and delivering a powerful
rhythm in his speaking. Martin Luther Kings script writer, Clarence B Jones reflected, It
was like he had an out-of-body experience.
So often it is the speaker who is flexible and vulnerable enough to connect with their audience
who has the most powerful impact.
By Sarah Lloyd-Hughes via www.gingerpublicspeaking.com

4.The story behind his 'I have a dream'

speech

Washington DC, 1963, Martin Luther King reaches the climax of his speech. Photograph: Bob
Adelman/Magnum

he night before the March on Washington, on 28 August 1963, Martin Luther King asked his
aides for advice about the next day's speech. "Don't use the lines about 'I have a dream', his
adviser Wyatt Walker told him. "It's trite, it's cliche. You've used it too many times already."
King had indeed employed the refrain several times before. It had featured in an address just
a week earlier at a fundraiser in Chicago, and a few months before that at a huge rally in
Detroit. As with most of his speeches, both had been well received, but neither had been
regarded as momentous.
This speech had to be different. While King was by now a national political figure, relatively
few outside the black church and the civil rights movement had heard him give a full address.
With all three television networks offering live coverage of the march for jobs and freedom,
this would be his oratorical introduction to the nation.
After a wide range of conflicting suggestions from his staff, King left the lobby at the Willard
hotel in DC to put the final touches to a speech he hoped would be received, in his words,
"like the Gettysburg address". "I am now going upstairs to my room to counsel with my
Lord," he told them. "I will see you all tomorrow."

King with his adviser Wyatt Walker, who urged: Dont use the lines about I have a dream. Its cliche.
Photograph: Tom Self/Birmingham News/Polaris/Eyevine Tom Self/Birmingham News/Polaris /Eyev

A few floors below King's suite, Walker made himself available. King would call down and
tell him what he wanted to say; Walker would write something he hoped worked, then head
up the stairs to present it to King.
"When it came to my speech drafts," wrote Clarence Jones, who had already penned the first
draft, "[King] often acted like an interior designer. I would deliver four strong walls and he
would use his God-given abilities to furnish the place so it felt like home." King finished the
outline at about midnight and then wrote a draft in longhand. One of his aides who went to
King's suite that night saw words crossed out three or four times. He thought it looked as
though King were writing poetry. King went to sleep at about 4am, giving the text to his aides
to print and distribute. The "I have a dream" section was not in it.
A few hours after King went to sleep, the march's organiser, Bayard Rustin, wandered on to
the Washington Mall, where the demonstration would take place later that day, with some of
his assistants, to find security personnel and journalists outnumbering demonstrators. Political
marches in Washington are now commonplace, but in 1963 attempting to stage a march of this
size in that place was unprecedented. The movement had high hopes for a large turnout and
originally set a goal of 100,000. From the reservations on coaches and trains alone, they
guessed they should be at least close to that figure. But when the morning came, that
expectation did little to calm their nerves. Reporters badgered Rustin about the ramifications
for both the event and the movement if the crowd turned out to be smaller than anticipated.
Rustin, forever theatrical, took a round pocket watch from his trousers and some paper from
his jacket. Examining first the paper and then the watch, he turned to the reporters and said:
"Everything is right on schedule." The piece of paper was blank.
The first official Freedom Train arrived at Washington's Union station from Pittsburgh at
8.02am, records Charles Euchner in Nobody Turn Me Around.Within a couple of hours,
thousands were pouring through the stations every five minutes, while almost two buses a
minute rolled into DC from across the country. About 250,000 people showed up that day. The
Washington Mall was awash with Hollywood celebrities, including Charlton Heston, Sidney
Poitier, Sammy Davis Jr, Burt Lancaster, James Garner and Harry Belafonte. Marlon Brando
wandered around brandishing an electric cattle prod, a symbol of police brutality. Josephine
Baker made it over from France. Paul Newman mingled with the crowd.

The March on Washington. Photograph: Leonard Freed/Magnum Photos

It was a hectic morning for King, paying a courtesy visit with other march leaders to
politicians at the Capitol, but he still found time to fiddle with the speech. When he eventually
walked to the podium, the typed final version was once more full of crossings out and
scribbles.
Rustin had limited the speakers to just five minutes each, and threatened to come on with a
crook and haul them from the podium when their time was up. But they all overran and, given
the heat 87F at noon and humidity, the crowd's mood began to wane. Weary from a night's
travel, many were anxious to make good time on the journey back and had already left. King
was 16th on an official programme that included the national anthem, the invocation, a prayer,
a tribute to women, two sets of songs and nine other speakers. Only the benediction and the
pledge came after. Portions of the crowd had moved off to seek respite from the heat under
the trees on the Mall while others dipped their feet in the reflecting pool. Those most eager for
a view of the podium braved the sun under the shade of their umbrellas.
"There was an air of subtle depression, of wistful apathy which existed in many," wrote
Norman Mailer. "One felt a little of the muted disappointment which attacks a crowd in the
seventh inning of a very important baseball game when the score has gone 11-3. The home
team is ahead, but the tension is broken: one's concern is no longer noble."
But if they were exhausted, they were no less excited. Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson had
lifted spirits with I've Been 'Buked and I've Been Scorned. Joachim Prinz, president of the
American Jewish Congress, followed, recalling his time as a rabbi in Berlin under Hitler: "A
great people who had created a great civilisation had become a nation of silent onlookers.
They remained silent in the face of hate, in the face of brutality and in the face of mass
murder," he said. "America must not become a nation of onlookers. America must not remain
silent."

King was next. The area around the mic was crowded with speakers, dignitaries and their
entourages. Wearing a black suit, black tie and white shirt, King edged through the melee
towards the podium.
"I tell students today, 'There were no jumbotrons [large screen TVs] back then,' " says
Rachelle Horowitz, the young activist who organised transport to the march. "All people
could see was a speck. And they listened to it."
King started slowly, and stuck close to his prepared text. "I thought it was a good speech,"
recalled John Lewis, the leader of the student wing of the movement,who had addressed the
march earlier that day. "But it was not nearly as powerful as many I had heard him make. As
he moved towards his final words, it seemed that he, too, could sense that he was falling short.
He hadn't locked into that power he so often found."
King was winding up what would have been a well-received but, by his standards, fairly
unremarkable oration. "Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South
Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana," he said. Then, behind him, Mahalia
Jackson cried out: "Tell 'em about the dream, Martin." Jackson had a particularly intimate
emotional relationship with King, who when he felt down would call her for some "gospel
musical therapy".
"She was his favourite gospel singer, and he would ask her to sing The Old Rugged Cross or
Jesus Met The Woman At The Well down the phone," Jones explains. Jackson had seen him
deliver the dream refrain in Detroit in June and clearly it had moved her.
"Go back to the slums and ghettoes of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this
situation can and will be changed," King said. Jackson shouted again: "Tell 'em about
the dream." "Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends." Then
King grabbed the podium and set his prepared text to his left. "When he was reading from his
text, he stood like a lecturer," Jones says. "But from the moment he set that text aside, he took
on the stance of a Baptist preacher." Jones turned to the person standing next to him and said:
"Those people don't know it, but they're about to go to church."
A smattering of applause filled a pause more pregnant than most.
"So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream."
"Aw, shit," Walker said. "He's using the dream."

Crowds in front of the Washington Monument at the March on Washington. Photograph: Bruce Davidson
/Magnum Photos

For all King's careful preparation, the part of the speech that went on to enter the history
books was added extemporaneously while he was standing on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial, speaking in full flight to the crowd. "I know that on the eve of his speech it was not
in his mind to revisit the dream," Jones insists.
It is open to debate just how spontaneous the insertion of the "I have a dream" section was
(Euchner says a guest in the adjacent hotel room to King heard him rehearsing the segment
the night before), but the two things we know for sure are that it was not in the prepared text
and it wasn't invented on the spot. King had been using the refrain for well over a year.
Talking some months later of his decision to include the passage, King said: "I started out
reading the speech, and I read it down to a point. 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."
"Though [King] was extremely well known before he stepped up to the lectern," Jones wrote,
"he had stepped down on the other side of history."

5.

The impact of the speech to the

world

Watching the whole thing on TV in the White House, President John F Kennedy, who had
never heard an entire King speech before, remarked: "He's damned good. Damned good."
Almost everyone, including even King's enemies, recognised the speech's reach and
resonance. William Sullivan, the FBI's assistant director of domestic intelligence,
recommended: "We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most
dangerous negro of the future of this nation."

A few in the crowd were unimpressed. Anne Moody, a black activist who had made the trip
from rural Mississippi, recalled: "I sat on the grass and listened to the speakers, to discover we
had 'dreamers' instead of leaders leading us. Just about every one of them stood up there
dreaming. Martin Luther King went on and on talking about his dream. I sat there thinking
that in Canton we never had time to sleep, much less dream."
But most were ebullient. "It would be like if, right now in the Arab spring, somebody made a
speech that was 15 minutes long that summarised what this whole period of social change was
all about," one of King's most trusted aides, Andrew Young, told me. "The country was in
more turmoil than it had been in since before the second world war. People didn't understand
it. And he explained it. It wasn't a black speech. It wasn't just a Christian speech. It was an allAmerican speech."
Fifty years on, the speech enjoys both national and global acclaim. A 1999 survey conducted
by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Texas A&M University, of 137
leading scholars of public address, named it the greatest speech of the 20th century.
During the protests in Tiananmen Square, China, some protesters held up posters of King
saying "I have a dream". On the wall that Israel has built around parts of the West Bank,
someone has written "I have a dream. This is not part of that dream." The phrase "I have a
dream" has been spotted in such disparate places as a train in Budapest and on a mural in
suburban Sydney. Asked in 2008 whether they thought the speech was "relevant to people of
your generation", 68% of Americans said yes, including 76% of blacks and 67% of whites.
Only 4% were not familiar with it.
But few of those in the movement thought at the time that it would be the speech by which
King would be remembered 50 years later.
"Rustin always said that King's genius was that he could simultaneously talk to a black
audience about why they needed to achieve their freedom and address a white audience about
why they should support that freedom," recalls Horowitz. "Simultaneously. It was a genius
that he could do that as one Gestalt King's was the poetry that made the march immortal.
He capped off the day perfectly. He did what everybody wanted him to do and expected him
to do. But I don't think anybody predicted at the time that the speech would do what it did
since."
Their bemusement was justified. For if, in its immediate aftermath, the speech had any
significant political impact, it was not obvious. "At the time of King's death in April 1968,
his speech at the March on Washington had nearly vanished from public view," writes Drew
Hansen in his book about the speech, The Dream. "There was no reason to believe that King's

speech would one day come to be seen as a defining moment for his career and for the civil
rights movement as a whole King's speech at the march is almost never mentioned during
the monumental debates over the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which occupy around 64,000
pages of the Congressional record."
History does not objectively sift through speeches, pick out the best on their merits and then
dedicate them faithfully to public memory. It commits itself to the task with great prejudice
and fickle appreciation, in a manner that tells us as much about the historian and the times as
the speech itself. The speech was marginalised because, in the last few years of his life, King
himself was marginalised, and few who had the power to elevate his speech to iconic status
had any self-interest in doing so. His growing propensity to take on issues of poverty,
followed by his opposition to the Vietnam war, lost him the support of the political class and
much of his white and more conservative base.
King's speech at the March on Washington offers a positive prognosis on the apparently
chronic American ailment of racism. As such, it is a rare thing to find in almost any culture or
nation: an optimistic oration about race that acknowledges the desperate circumstances that
made it necessary while still projecting hope, patriotism, humanism and militancy.
In the age of Obama and the Tea Party, there is something in there for everyone. It speaks, in
the vernacular of the black church, with clarity and conviction to African Americans'
historical plight and looks forward to a time when that plight will be eliminated ("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'. No, no, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be
satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream").
Its nod to all that is sacred in American political culture, from the founding fathers to the
American dream, makes it patriotic ("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.'"). It sets bigotry against colour-blindness while prescribing no route map for
how we get from one to the other. ("I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its
vicious racists little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little
white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.")
But the breadth of its appeal is to some extent at the expense of depth. It is in no small part so
widely admired because the interpretations of what King was saying vary so widely. Polls
show that while African Americans and American whites both agree about the extent to which
"the dream has been realised", they profoundly disagree on the state of contemporary race
relations. The recent acquittal of George Zimmerman over the shooting of the black teenager
Trayvon Martin illustrates the degree to which blacks and whites are less likely to see the

same problems, more likely to disagree on the causes of those problems and, therefore,
unlikely to agree on a remedy. Hearing the same speech, they understand different things.
Conservatives, meanwhile, have been keen to co-opt both King and the speech. In 2010, Tea
Party favourite Glenn Beck held the "Restoring Honour" rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the
47th anniversary of the speech, telling a crowd of about 90,000: "The man who stood down
on those stairs gave his life for everyone's right to have a dream." Almost a year later, black
republican presidential candidate Herman Cain opened his speech to the southern Republican
leadership conference with the words, "I have a dream."
Their embrace of the speech has made some black intellectuals and activists wary. They fear
that the speech can too easily be distorted in a manner that undermines the speaker's legacy.
"In the light of the determined misuse of King's rhetoric, a modest proposal appears in order,"
Georgetown university professor Michael Dyson wrote in 2001. "A 10-year moratorium on
listening to or reading 'I Have a Dream'." At first blush, such a proposal seems absurd and
counter- productive. After all, King's words have convinced many Americans that racial
justice should be aggressively pursued. The sad truth is, however, that our political climate
has eroded the real point of King's beautiful words."
These responses tell us at least as much about now as then, perhaps more. The 50th
anniversary of "I have a dream" arrives at a time when the president is black, whites are
destined to become a minority in the US in little more than a generation, and civil rights-era
protections are being dismantled. Segregationists have all but disappeared, even if segregation
as a lived experience has not. Racism, however, remains.
Fifty years on, it is clear that in eliminating legal segregation not racism, but formal,
codified discrimination the civil rights movement delivered the last moral victory in
America for which there is still a consensus. While the struggle to defeat it was bitter and
divisive, nobody today is seriously campaigning for the return of segregation or openly
mourning its demise. The speech's appeal lies in the fact that, whatever the interpretation, it
remains the most eloquent, poetic, unapologetic and public articulation of that victory.
Gary Younge Friday 9 August 2013 21.00 BST, www.theguardian.com

6. Copyrights Controversy
If you ever hear a complete recording of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his
extraordinarily powerful I Have a Dream speech at the Washington Monument on Aug. 28,
1963, you will certainly never forget it. But it isnt as easy as you might think to get access:

The oration, as famous a speech as there is in American history, is private property, not in the
public domain. Using it legally costs money, meaning that most people, including students
learning about the civil rights movement, will at best only hear small bites of it.
Who owns the 17-minute speech? The King family. King himself obtained rights to his I
Have a Dream speech a month after he gave it in 1963 when he sued two companies that
were selling unauthorized copies. His family has since then received an income from
exercising its intellectual property rights, and has gone to court to protect its copyright,
including against CBS and USA Today ( though apparently not against educators who have
used the speech in violation of the copyright).
Historians and civil rights leaders have long worried that keeping the speech under copyright
effectively limited access so much over the decades has negatively affected the way young
people look at King. The power of the speech is at least as much in his delivery as the words.
It makes it harder to learn about the speech, said historian Taylor Branch, author of a
Pulitzer Prize-winning trilogy of books that chronicles Kings life and the history of the civil
rights movement. He said he has talked with the King family over the years about putting the
speech in the public domain but they have refused. They are making a mistake, he said.
All of Kings speeches and papers are owned by his descendants. I asked representatives of
the King Center in Atlanta to explain why the speech was never made public but the only
response I got was an e-mailed intellectual property request form to fill out. Representatives
for the King family have said in the past that the family wants educators to have access to it,
and some King documents are available for free to researchers.
But under the law anyone who wants to hear or use the complete I Have a Dream speech is
supposed to buy a copy sanctioned by the King family, which receives the proceeds. You can
buy a DVD for $20 here, on the King Center Web site. According to this story by Alex
Pasternack on motherboard.vice.com, the speech is not in the new digital archive of the
centers Web site.
That story also explains that the King estate owns the speech along with a private corporation.
It says:

Any unauthorized usage of the speech and a number of other speeches by King including in
PBS documentaries is a violation of American law. Youd be hard pressed to find a good
complete video version on the web, and its not even to be found in the new digital archive
of the King Centers website. If you want to watch the whole thing, legally, youll need to get
the $20 DVD.
Thats because the King estate, and, as of 2009, the British music publishing
conglomerate EMI Publishing, owns the copyright of the speech and its recorded
performance. While the copyright restriction isnt news, EMIs unusual role in policing the
use of Kings words the first instance of the company taking on a non-music based
intellectual property catalog hasnt been widely reported. In November 2011, EMI Group
was auctioned off, and the publishing business was sold to a consortium run by Sony Corp for
$2.2 billion.
By Valerie Strauss August 27, 2013, www.washingtonpost.com

In January 2013, an internet rights group born out of the SOPA fight posted a video of the
speech to YouTube and Vimeoa novel kind of civil disobedience. "Had SOPA and PIPA
passed last year," Fight for the Future wrote on YouTube, "you could have gone to jail for
sharing this video, and entire websites could have been shut down just for linking to it. This
speech is too important to be censored by a broken copyright system."
The Fight for the Future clip was only up on Vimeo for a few hours before it was removed for
violating terms of service. But in an indication of the peculiarities of copyright law and its
algorithmic enforcement, the video is still up on YouTube. Evan Greer, Fight for the Future's
campaign manager, says that the group has neither heard from EMI nor YouTube. A
minor and perhaps accidental victorybut not exactly one worthy of King.
But other copies are still being removed, says FFtF, which has encouraged others to help
spread the speech online. Today, when one user named Dario uploaded a copy of FFtF's video,
he instantly received a takedown notice via YouTube's Content ID system:
"Any teenager should be able to go on YouTube and find this speech in its entirety," Greer
wrote in an email. "Broken copyright laws should never keep Dr. Kings words from being
heard, especially in a day and age when they are so terrifyingly relevant."
Though two courts have ruled in favor of the King family's copyright, no court has examined
whether the speech may be used without permission under "fair use." Recent jurisprudence
has recognized fair use of copyrighted material if it is used for nonprofit historical or
educational purposes, if it is commenting on the work, or if it modifies the work enough to
create something new.

By ALEX PASTERNACK via motherboard.vice.com, August 28, 2013

7.

Quotes

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.

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

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.

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 open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the
time to lift our nation from the qu icksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of
brotherhood.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until
the bright day of justice emerges.

We cannot walk alone.

I have a dream today