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. In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.īut one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.

This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. While the speech itself has been used (and sometimes misused) to call for a “color-blind” country, its power is only increased by knowing its rhetorical and intellectual antecedents.įive score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. For this month’s Annotations, we’ve taken Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic “I Have A Dream” speech, and provided scholarly analysis of its groundings and inspirations-the speech’s religious, political, historical and cultural underpinnings are wide-ranging and have been read as jeremiad, call to action, and literature.

I had a dream martin luther king