Martin

In August of 1963, hundreds of thousands of Americans crowded before the Lincoln Memorial as part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Near the end of the day, Dr. King, who had led many peaceful protests for civil rights in the face of deep-rooted prejudice and often brutally violent opposition, addressed the crowd and the nation with deeply moving words of justice. One hundred years after Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and nearly two hundred years since the Declaration of Independence, America had still not accomplished equal liberty for all. The time had come for America to finally live up to its creed, fulfill the promise of the American Founding, and make possible King’s vision of a truly free and just society.

Iam happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. 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. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free; one hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination; 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 Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.

So we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. 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...