Speech time of "I Have a Dream"

In 1953, Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott married. In the second year of Martin Luther King Jr., he became a pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1955, he received his doctorate in systematic theology.

On December 5, 1955, civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to comply with the racial segregation policy on Montgomery buses. After this, black residents launched a bus boycott and elected King served as the leader of their new form, the Montgomery Rights Promotion Association. The Auto Boycott lasted for a year in 1956, and Martin Luther King Jr. became famous for his leadership. In December 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Alabama's racial segregation laws unconstitutional, and segregation regulations on Montgomery's buses were abolished.

Seeking further development after the Montgomery victory, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other southern black leaders established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. In 1959, Martin Luther King traveled to India and further developed Gandhi's nonviolent strategy. At the end of that year, Martin Luther King resigned from Dexter and returned to Atlanta, where he became a pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church with his father, ***.

In 1960, black college students launched a wave of sit-down protests that spurred the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Martin Luther King supported the student movement and showed interest in creating the youth chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Student radicals admired him, but they were dissatisfied with King's top-down leadership and decided to achieve autonomy. As an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Ella Baker, who once served as deputy director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, made it clear to other civil rights representatives that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee would remain a student-led organization. During the 1961 Freedom Rides, Martin Luther King was criticized for refusing to participate, exacerbating tensions between him and young radicals. Conflict between the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee continued during the Albany Movement of 1961 and 1962.

Demonstrations

On April 12, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. and leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led a massive mass demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. King himself was arrested that day. He wrote Letters from a Birmingham Jail while in prison. In the letter, he elaborated on the original intentions, expectations and dreams of the American civil rights movement, and refuted various accusations against the civil rights movement. In the summer of 1963, when Rev. Shuttleworth met with U.S. President Kennedy at the White House, he said: "Without Birmingham, we wouldn't be sitting here today." This place is famous for its white police force's strong opposition to racial integration. Clashes between unarmed black demonstrators and police armed with dogs and fire hoses made headlines around the world. President Kennedy responded to the Birmingham protests by petitioning Congress for liberalization of civil rights legislation, which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Later, on August 28, 1963, mass demonstrations culminated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which brought more than 250,000 protesters to Washington, D.C. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Popularity

Martin Luther King's popularity grew in 1963 when he became Time magazine's 1963 Person of the Year: Martin Luther King Jr. and in 1964 Nobel Peace Prize and continued to rise. Yet alongside the fame and praise, there were also conflicts within the movement's leadership. Malcolm X's ideas of self-defense and black nationalism aroused political uproar in the North, and the role of urban blacks exceeded King's call for nonviolence. At the same time, King also faced public criticism from Stokely Carmichael, the founder of the "Black Power" movement.

On August 28, 2011, the memorial statue of Martin Luther King was unveiled on the National Mall in Washington. Previously, only several famous presidents in American history, such as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt, had memorial statues here. Martin Luther King was the first civilian political figure who served as a social critic during his lifetime to be honored here. The commemoration of the first African-American political leader is of extraordinary significance. Why has he achieved the same prestigious status as these famous presidents? It was his peaceful struggle to uphold the basic values ??of freedom, equality, democracy and justice in the Declaration of Independence and the Charter of the Union, which made him, like these presidents, widely respected by the American people and renowned in American history.

Turning

Not only were the effectiveness of Martin Luther King's efforts hampered by the divided state of black leadership, but he also encountered increasing obstruction from the nation's administrative leaders. As racial violence in the city escalated in 1967, FBI Director Edgar Hoover took the opportunity to intensify a comprehensive effort to undermine King's leadership. This, coupled with King's public criticism of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, created tensions between him and Lyndon Johnson's administration.

At the end of 1967, Martin Luther King launched the Poor People's Movement to combat economic problems. This movement did not receive the support of early civil rights reformers. The following year, while supporting a Memphis janitor strike, he gave his final speech, "I've Reached the Top." He was assassinated and died at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on the evening of April 4, 1968. He was 39 years old.

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Education

Martin Luther King was born on January 15, 1929 at 501 Auburn Street in Atlanta, Georgia. In a small Victorian building. His father is a church minister and his mother is a teacher. At the age of 15, the smart and studious King entered Morehouse College with honors to study sociology, and later received a bachelor's degree in literature (Martin Luther King received a bachelor's degree from Morehouse University in 1948). In 1951 he received a bachelor's degree from Crozier Theological Seminary, and in 1955 he received a doctorate in theology from Boston University.

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Personal career

Leader

In 1954, Martin Luther King became the mayor of Montgomery, Alabama. A pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. On December 1, 1955, a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus. Therefore, a local police officer from the Montgomery County Police Department was charged with violating the public regulations of changing the car seat. She was arrested on the grounds of quarantine order. Martin Luther King immediately organized the Montgomery Car Strike (Montgomery Municipal Improvement Association), calling on nearly 50,000 black people in the city to resist public transportation laws for a year, forcing the court to rule to cancel the ban on local transportation. Seat isolation. He became a leader in the civil rights movement. In 1958 he was arrested for vagrancy. In 1963, Martin Luther King organized the March on Washington for black job opportunities and freedom. In 1964, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Intimidation

He has been intimidated countless times in his life. He has been imprisoned in various ways ten times, imprisoned three times, assassinated three times, and mentally ill for the first time. Stabbed once, a second time a bomb was thrown into the church. The third time, on April 4, 1968, in the office upstairs of the York Gun Machinery Company on Main Street in Memphis, James Earl Ray set up a sporting rifle and rented it from the adjacent West Brewer Hotel adjacent to the Lorraine Hotel. Kill it in the next room.

Commemoration

In January 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed a decree stipulating that the third Monday of January each year would be the National Memorial Day for Martin Luther King in the United States. This day commemorates this great man and is designated as a legal holiday. So far, there are only three examples of personal anniversaries as official holidays in the United States, namely Columbus Day (the second Monday in October), which commemorates the discovery of the American continent, and Presidents' Day (the third day of February), which commemorates George Washington. Monday), as well as Martin Luther King Jr. Day as mentioned here. One of his most influential and well-known speeches was "I Have a Dream" on August 28, 1963, which forced the U.S. Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawing racial segregation and racial discrimination.

Features

Martin Luther King sought equality for black people and launched the civil rights movement in the United States. He has made outstanding achievements and is famous throughout the world. Before becoming an activist in the civil rights movement, King was a Baptist minister in the black community. The civil rights movement was a product of the black church in the United States. "I Have a Dream" records King's first civil rights speech and reveals the relationship between the civil rights movement and the black church.

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A great speech

Opening

Martin Luther King stood there, silent for a moment. The halls and aisles of the church were crowded with people, who were looking in from the windows and looking up from the seats in the hall. When he spoke to this large group of strangers, his voice was low, slow and incomprehensible. Different from the ordinary opening remarks. "Tonight, we are gathering to discuss a serious matter," he said, pausing for a few words and then paused. After he finished speaking, only three or two people in the crowd responded "Yes", and the others remained silent. He knew that this was a group of people who could create momentum, but they were waiting to see how he would guide them. "We gather, in a general sense, because we are first and foremost American citizens and we are determined to exercise our citizenship rights to the fullest extent," he said. "But we are gathering, in a special sense, because of the unequal treatment on the buses in Montgomery." There was an unclear sound of approval from the crowd. Martin Luther King Jr.'s sentences became shorter and his voice rose gradually. "This type of unequal treatment is nothing new at all. The problem has been around for a long time. Just the day before, last Thursday to be exact, one of Montgomery's best citizens, mind you, not only one of the best black citizens, but One of Montgomery's best citizens was taken from the bus and imprisoned because she refused to give up her seat to a white man."

At every pause in the speech, the audience should respond with "Yes" and "Amen". They had kept up with Martin Luther King, but the enthusiasm had yet to be mobilized by Martin Luther King.

Martin Luther King went on to talk about the law. He said that even under the segregation law, the arrest of Rosa Parks may not be legal because the law did not specifically stipulate that black areas and white areas should be divided on the bus. . “The law has never been clarified on this point,” he said, to a loud “Of course not” echoed by a man in the audience. "I think I'm saying this with legal authority. I'm not saying I have legal authority, but I have legal authority to back it up: laws, ordinances, city regulations, it's never been fully clarified." This sentence shows that Martin ·Luther King was a man who spoke very carefully, but his audience was unmoved. King returned to the peculiar nature of the Rosa Parks case. He said, "Now that it happened, I'm glad it happened to a person like Mrs. Parks, because no one can doubt her supreme virtue. No one can doubt the nobility of her character. No one can doubt her Christian faith." Deep." The crowd responded softly in unison: That's right. Martin Luther King Jr. repeated: "Arrest her for refusing to stand." The crowd began to get excited and kept up with Martin Luther King's unhurried speech.

Climax

He paused slightly longer. “You know, my friends, that there will come a time when people can no longer bear the iron heel of their oppressors,” he cried. In an instant, some people applauded, some cheered, and the sound of "Yes" formed a wave and rushed toward him. The sound shook the heaven and the earth, one wave after another, and there seemed to be no possibility of stopping. Just as it was about to calm down, a large group of people gathered outside the door shouted again, forming a higher sound wave. The thunderous sound was accompanied by a low roar, which was the sound of stamping feet on the floor, making the sound so loud that it seemed that it was no longer heard clearly by the ears, but felt from the vibration of the lungs. The loud noise shook the building and did not subside for a long time. One sentence touched an emotional chord, elevating the echoes typical of a black church ceremony above the din of a political rally to a level that Martin Luther King had never experienced. Incomparable rabbit. When the church finally regained its calm, Martin Luther King's voice rang out again, lighting another fire for the audience. “There comes a time, my friends, when people can no longer bear to be thrown into the abyss of humiliation and endure the torment of endless despair,” he asserted. "One day, people can no longer bear to be driven out of the bright July sunshine in their lives, and are forced to stand in the biting cold wind of November in the Alps. Eventually..." Jin wanted to continue, but the crowd shouted The sound obliterated him. No one could tell whether people were shouting because he had touched a nerve or because they were proud of the speaker for speaking such eloquent words. “We party, we party, because we can’t take it anymore,” Martin Luther King Jr. repeated.

Changing the topic

Perhaps he was a little worried about the anger that broke out from the crowd. Martin Luther King changed the topic and talked about avoiding various pitfalls in the boycott movement. He said, "We all know that we are not promoting violence." "We have stopped engaging in violence." Someone in the audience shouted, "Repeat that! Repeat that!" He continued, "I want to Let the whole Montgomery and the whole country know that we are Christian believers." He pronounced the word "Christian" clearly. "Tonight, the only weapon in our hands is protest." When he paused, the crowd burst into enthusiastic praise. He and the audience fell into a slow narration. "We could not do this if we were imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain of a communist country. We could not do this if we were imprisoned in the dungeons of authoritarian regimes. But the great glory of American democracy, Now is the time to protest for what is right." As the shouts of approval died down, King offered one final reason to avoid violence: to differentiate himself from the Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacists. The killers are rampaging through the South, terrorizing black people. “No white man was dragged from his home and taken to a lonely road to be killed,” he said, vaguely alluding to Ku Klux Klan tactics. "There is not one among our people who will openly flout the Constitution of this country."

Martin Luther King paused. Apart from the humming, the church was relatively quiet. "My friends," he said slowly, "I want you to know that we have a strong and courageous determination to restore justice to our city's buses. We are not wrong. There is nothing wrong in what we are trying to do." The crowd let out a pent-up cry of anticipation as they realized that Martin Luther King was getting closer to the heart of the matter. “If we are wrong, the highest court in the land is wrong,” Martin Luther King sang, his voice deep and high, his body swaying. "If we are wrong, God Almighty is also wrong!" he shouted loudly, and the emotions of the audience rose again just like when he said he could no longer bear it. The sound became louder and louder, reaching the highest roof of the church. . They were far from discussing the Rosa Parks case or busing laws. King's final cry took blasphemous rhetoric to the limit that his faith and the hearts of his listeners could bear. The sound wave continued to rise until Jin's voice penetrated the sound wave, reaching the point where it could not be louder. "If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was just a utopian sleepwalker who never came to earth! If we are wrong, justice is just a lie." This statement is really amazing.

He had to wait a moment before, in a voice glowing with rage and ecstasy, he uttered his final words that soared to the sky: "We are determined to fight in Montgomery until 'justice rolls in like the waves, and righteousness like the rivers!'" the audience shouted. Obliterated are these two quotes from the book of Amos. Amos was a prophet of Israel and a humble shepherd. He and the missionary Isaiah (son of Amos) were both biblical authorities on justice that King liked to cite.

Restraining his emotions, he went on to talk about the need for unity, the dignity of protest and the historical precedent of the labor movement. The topic was relatively secular, but the audience listened attentively. "Tonight, I want to tell you that it is not enough for us to talk about love," he said. "Love is one of the highest Christian beliefs, but there is another side, called justice. Justice is thoughtful love. Justice is love that overcomes those who are contrary to love." He said that God is not only a loving God, "God also Stand in front of the country and say, 'Don't move, please know that I am God. If you don't obey me, I will break the backbone of your power and cut off all connections with the international and domestic countries. '" As Kim's bold words flowed. Out, the audience kept shouting and clapping rhythmically. “Next to love stands justice,” he said. "We not only use the weapons of persuasion, we also have to use the weapons of coercion." He once again called for unity and collaboration. He invoked history and called on his audience to behave civilly so that future saints would look back on the black men of Montgomery and say, "They were a group of people who had the moral courage to fight for their rights." They could, he said. at this point. "God has blessed us so that we can fulfill our mission before it is too late." Someone responded, "Oh, that's right." Martin Luther King added: "As we act as planned, we have to think These things."

Impact

When Martin Luther King came down from the podium, the crowd was shocked and confused. The speech ended too abruptly and was too discouraging. According to the rules of the speech, there will be a third climax at the end, and the audience is waiting for his guidance! Seconds passed and the disappointment was replaced by memory and excitement. When Martin Luther King Jr. walked out of the church, he was followed by applause, and churchgoers leaned forward to touch him. This is how the bus boycott began. Within minutes of his first political speech, he felt an overwhelming desire to connect with strangers who loved and hated him as he did all the prophets. He is only 26 years old this year, and his future life is less than 12 years and 4 months.

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Today, I am pleased to join you in what will become the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our country.

100 years ago, a great American - whose symbolic figure we stand today - signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The promulgation of this important law was like a huge beacon of hope for millions of black slaves who were burned in the flames of injustice, like a joyful dawn that ended the long night of imprisonment.

However, 100 years later, black people still have not gained freedom. 100 years later, black people are still hobbling miserably under the yoke of segregation and racial discrimination. 100 years later, black people still live on an isolated island of poverty in a sea of ??material prosperity. 100 years later, black people still weep in the corners of American society and still feel that they are homeless in their homeland. So we are here today to bring this appalling situation to light.

In a sense, we come to the nation's capital to cash a check. When the founders of our Republic wrote the glorious pages of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they signed a promissory note that every American can inherit. This promissory note promised all men—white and black—the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Today, however, it is clear that America has defaulted on this promissory note to her citizens of color. Instead of honoring this sacred debt, America began giving Black people a bad check—a check that bounced back marked “insufficient funds.” But we never believe that the bank of justice will go bankrupt. We cannot believe that this country's vast reservoir of opportunity will be underfunded. So let's cash this check. This check will give us precious freedoms and the security of justice.

We have come to this sacred place to remind America that these are urgent times. Now is not the time to take things easy or take the sedative of incrementalism. Now is the time to realize the promise of democracy. Now is the time to emerge from the dark, desolate valley of segregation and onto the sunny path of racial equality. Now is the time to lift our nation out of the quicksand of racial injustice and onto the rock of brotherhood. Now is the time for true justice for all of God’s children.

Ignoring the urgency of this moment would be fatal to the country. Until the glorious autumn of freedom and equality arrives, the scorching summer of black people’s reasonable and plaintive complaints will not pass. 1963 was not an end, but a beginning.

If the country continues to go its own way, those who hope that black people will be satisfied simply by venting their anger will be disappointed. There will be neither peace nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted civil rights.

The whirlwind of rebellion will continue to shake the foundation of our nation until the glorious day of justice.

But there is something I must say to those who stand on the perilous threshold to the Palace of Justice. As we strive for legal status, we must not do anything wrong that leads to crime. We must not drink the bitter wine of hatred to quench our thirst for freedom.

We should always fight with decency and discipline. We cannot allow our creative protests to degenerate into violent actions. We should constantly rise to the lofty realm of using the power of the soul to deal with the power of the body. The new miraculous militancy sweeping through Negro society should not lead us to distrust all white people - for many of our white brothers have come to realize that their fate is bound up with ours and their freedom is bound up with ours. Related. The fact that they are here today at the rally is proof of that.

We cannot act alone. When we act, we must keep moving forward. We cannot retreat. People who are passionate about the civil rights movement are asked, "When will you be satisfied?" We will never be satisfied as long as black people remain the victims of unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We are never satisfied as long as we are turned away from highway motels and city hotels after we have exhausted our travels. We will never be satisfied as long as the negro's basic range of movement is limited to the narrow ghetto to the larger ghetto. We will never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their individuality and dignity by a "Whites Only" sign. We will never be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and the Negro in New York feels that he has nothing to do with it. No, no, we will not be satisfied until justice flows like water and righteousness like a fountain.

I am not unaware of the hardships some of you have gone through to get here. Some of you are just getting out of your tiny cells. Some come from areas where their pursuit of freedom has been battered by storms of persecution and rampant police brutality. You have gone through many hardships and hardships. Keep working hard and believe: innocent people who suffer will be saved in the end. 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 ghettos and ghettos of our northern cities. Know that this can and will change. We must not sink into the abyss of despair.

Friends, today I want to tell you that despite the current difficulties, I still have a dream. This dream is 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 founding creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

i I dream that one day, in the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves can sit at the same table as the sons of former slave owners, as close as brothers. I have a dream that one day even Mississippi, a desert state sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into a green oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that one day my four little girls will live in a country where they will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the quality of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day things will change in Alabama—despite the state’s governor still spouting talk about challenging federal statutes and refusing to enforce them—where black children can and white children walking hand in hand as brothers and sisters.

I have a dream today.

I dream that one day, deep valleys will be bridged, mountains will be leveled, cross roads will become smooth roads, and winding paths will become thoroughfares. God’s brilliance will reappear, and all living creatures in the world will come to visit him. This is our hope. This is a belief I will take with me to the South. With this faith, we can mine the stone of hope from the mountain of despair. With this faith, we can transform the cacophony of quarrels in this country into a sweet symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we can work together, pray together, fight together, go to jail together, and defend freedom together, because we know that one day we will be free.

On this day, all of God's children will be able to sing this song with new meaning:

My country, dear land of the free, I sing for you. This is the place where my ancestors died, this is the place where the early immigrants were proud, and let the voice of freedom ring through every hill. If America is to be a great nation, this must happen.

So let freedom ring from the mighty heights of New Hampshire!

Let freedom ring through the mountains of New York State!

Let freedom ring from Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Peaks!

Let freedom ring through Colorado’s snow-capped Rocky Mountains!

Let freedom ring through the graceful peaks of California!

No, not just that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain, Georgia!

Let freedom ring through Lookout Mountain, Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every mountain and every mound of Mississippi!

Let the voice of freedom ring from every hill!

When we let the voice of freedom ring, when we let the voice of freedom ring in every big village, every state capital, and every town, we can speed up the arrival of this day.

Then all of God's children, black and white, Jew and Gentile, Jesus and Catholic, will be able to join hands and sing that old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank the Almighty God, we are free at last!"