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54 Years Ago, MLK, Jr. Gave The ‘I Have A Dream’ Speech

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Robert Donachie Capitol Hill and Health Care Reporter
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Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave the famous “I Have A Dream” speech in Washington, D.C., on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963.

King was in D.C. for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which was attended by over 200,000 Americans, both black and white. The march was an effort to highlight the social and political challenges black Americans faced  every day.

King gave the famous speech in front of an audience that packed every inch of the reflecting pond.

“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’ one day right there 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 today,” King said.

“And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village 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 Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” King said.

Read the full text of the speech here.

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