That was when Jackson spontaneously shouted, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin, tell ‘em about the dream!”Īt that moment, everything changed. “And in that breach, something unexpected, historic and largely unheralded happened.” When he finished the promissory note analogy, he paused,” Jones continued. “This was strange, given the way he usually worked over the material Stanley and I provided. He started off with the bad check analogy that Jones had written. On the day of the now-famous speech, soon after Jackson’s rousing performance, Jones still didn’t know what King was about to say when he stepped up to the podium. You may not be on strike, but either we go up together, or we go down together.A pause in the speech gave Jackson the moment to shout out And when we have our march, you need to be there. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point, in Memphis. “We've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. From there, he called on those in attendance to remain united in their fight against injustice without the use of violence. In his address, he explains that if given the choice to live during any period of human history, he would have chosen the second-half of the 20th century because grappling with racial, social and economic injustices were a matter of survival. Striking sanitation workers packed the church beyond capacity to see King on his third trip to Memphis in support of their cause in less than a month. King gave his final speech on Apat Mason Temple in Memphis, fewer than 24 hours before he was assassinated. Racism can well be that corrosive evil that will bring down the curtain on western civilization.” 7. “For the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country, even today, is freedom and equality while racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists. We were taking the Black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.” It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. “Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. This ended up being one of King’s most controversial speeches. These included the economic burdens of sending American troops to fight in Vietnam (which he said amounted to a “cruel manipulation of the poor”), and the ongoing violence against Vietnamese civilians caught in the crossfire. 'Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence'Īlthough King had spoken about his opposition to the Vietnam War publicly since 1965, his “Beyond Vietnam” speech-delivered on April 4, 1967-is considered his first major public statement that centered on making a case against American involvement in the conflict.Īddressing a crowd of approximately 3,000 people in Riverside Church in New York City, King outlined seven reasons why he thought it was time that he, as a civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, needed to take a stance on the Vietnam War. No, no, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”ġ960 Greensboro sit-in begins 4. “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.' 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. The primary message he conveyed through both his list of dreams and the original speech was one calling for racial justice by way of ending segregation and discrimination. “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. Smith in an interview on November 29, 1963. “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.
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