Martin Luther King's Dream

Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech will have its 40th anniversary on August 28. The Guardian reprints the speech and offers an essay on how the speech came about.

I memorized the speech for a high school oratory class. What struck me then was that it was not hard to memorize at all. The speech seems to flow with an unmistakeable
cadeance, the words flowing mellifluously:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

The Guardian essay above discusses how President Kennedy wanted the whole demonstration aborted, fearing that such a large crowd of blacks may be a cause of destabilization for the nation's capital. The general feeling then, I gather, was that the reforms being advocated by Martin Luther King, albeit desirable and just, were simply going too fast. When you really come to think about it, perhaps the great changes that happened in history have all been considered ill-timed. Great reformers have all been considered brash and extremist, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King included.

Incidentally, I have read somewhere that Kennedy, no slouch at public speaking himself, was impressed with the oratorical skills of King. Watching King deliver the "I Have a Dream Speech," Kennedy was said to have uttered, "this man [King] sure is good in what he's doing."

So come August 28, Let freedom ring.