I Have a Dream: March on Washington
1963 · event
Before 250,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. set aside his prepared text and spoke of a dream. Seventeen minutes that bent the arc of history, words every generation since has learned by heart.
The most famous part of the speech was not in the script. Mahalia Jackson, standing behind King, called out: "Tell them about the dream, Martin!", and he set his pages aside.
The FBI's response was to label him "the most dangerous Negro in America." History's response was a Nobel Peace Prize, a national holiday, and a phrase every schoolchild on Earth can finish: "I have a dream…"
The speech nearly didn't happen at all, advisers warned King not to reuse the "dream" theme he had tried in Detroit. He went to bed at 4 a.m. still rewriting.
Afterwards, the march's organisers met President Kennedy at the White House; within two years came the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. The Lincoln Memorial step where he stood is now engraved, a place where visitors stand every day, in the exact spot, and look out at the crowd that isn't there.