Let Freedom Ring! On the Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Historic Speech to the March on Washington, August 28, 1963
By Michele Steinberg
Sixty-three years ago, on a single warm August day, some 250,000 people, mostly Black Americans but many others of different races and religions gathered in Washington, D.C. for a “March for Jobs and Justice.” At this historic event, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the speech, commonly called “I Have a Dream,” that would resonate across the decades and across continents. The March and the speech changed the direction of American history.
The March on Washington was actually decades in the making, involving hundreds of Black leaders in the 20th Century struggle against racism, segregation, and the brutal treatment of Black people in America, especially in the South. The leaders of the organizing effort are pictured below in a White House meeting with President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson in June 1963.
Civil Rights organizations, religious leaders, labor union officials, Hollywood’s and Broadway’s most famous entertainers, and the new breed of “folk singers,” spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memoria,l and also had a hand in building the March.
Thurgood Marshall, the lawyer — and future Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1967-1991) — who had argued before the Supreme Court and won the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case in 1954, was one of the 250,000 marchers.
Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream,” speech has become a standard of American political literature, in my view, on a par with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. School children are asked to memorize and recite some parts. But in the atmosphere of modern-day “Palmer Raid” round-ups of immigrants and non-citizens, and other threats to civil liberties, the fear that its message will be buried or even erased, is not unrealistic.
Let Freedom Ring!
To commemorate the anniversary of the historic march and Dr. King’s speech, we here publish the text, as presented in the audio record posted by NPR in 2023.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
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 for millions of slaves, who had been seared in the flames of whithering 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 till sadly crippled by the manacle of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro still lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we have 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 inalienable 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 its colored 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. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.
We have also come to his 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 it 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 quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time, to make justice a reality to all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of its colored citizens. 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. Those who hope that the Negros 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 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 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 white 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, 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 the 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 … 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; that one day right down 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, 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 the faith that I will 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.
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!”
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 every hill and molehill of Mississippi and every mountainside.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement 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 spiritual, “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”
Footnote: Living History
The 1963 March on Washington is living history, as demonstrated by this excerpt from one of American System Now founder Nancy Spannaus’s beautiful writings. In February, 2020, Nancy wrote:
“My husband Ed and I just returned from a celebration of Black History Month, and that phrase from Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1963 ‘I have a dream’ speech is still ringing in my ears. It resonates as well with the Negro National Anthem ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ which the entire gathering sang with gusto at the beginning of the event.
“The celebration was held at the Second Mt. Olive Baptist Church, which is located in the small town of Hamilton, Virginia. The church was founded in 1892 and has served continuously since.
The Second Mt. Olive Baptist Church, Hamilton, Virginia.
“The small building was full, thanks to the presence of many guests. The program was entitled `Voices of History from Those who Lived It!’ Several of the speakers were in their 90s and had quite some stories to tell.
“The music – all of which was joined by the congregation – brought back warm memories of my days campaigning for office, especially in southern Virginia, where I participated in marches and services dedicated to abolishing the death penalty and advancing civil rights and economic justice for all people. The short speeches and prayers were uplifting as well, emphasizing, as Dr. King did, the fact that we fight to achieve freedom so that we can lift up others of all races and creeds.”
Let freedom ring.
Related Posts
Tags: civil rights, Martin Luther King
