Editor’s note: This story was originally published Jan 16, 2024.
After 250,000 people marched in the “blazing sun” up to the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began what we now know as his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.
King’s famed message began with the statement, “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.”
The reverend’s words from that speech wove their way into the fabric of this nation and into the hearts of many ever since 1963.
One Washington, D.C., student who took the bus downtown that day to join the gathering, Ken Howard, understood that he was a part of a historic moment, according to the Smithsonian Magazine.
“The crowd was just enormous,” Howard said. “Kind of like the feeling you get when a thunderstorm is coming and you know it is going to really happen. There was an expectation and excitement that this march finally would make a difference.”
What some may not know is that the iconic four words of “I have a dream” were never planned to be said on that historic day.
‘I have a dream’ was an improvised line
Christopher P. Neck, associate professor at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, has reportedly written various articles offering explanation why King’s speech has continued to be “popular with mainstream audiences.”
“The interesting fact is that the four words ‘I have a dream’ almost didn’t make it into the speech. MLK had used the phrase ‘I have a dream’ in several speeches at least nine months before the equal rights march in Washington,” Neck said.
Neck further explained, “His advisers discouraged him from using the same theme again; they felt the phrase was trite and cliché. MLK respected his advisers’ view and thus the phrase was cut from the final draft of the speech that was completed the night before the event.”
Neck further said that if you watch the speech, you can see the King was speaking from a “lecturing format” and that while his words were impactful, they weren’t “connecting with the audience in the manner and with the energy he had wanted.”
“Then you will see him pause for about 10 seconds. This 10-second pause is what changed history. So what happened during this 10-second pause? The answer? A gospel singer standing near MLK that day encouraged King to say, ‘I have a dream,’” Neck said.
Mahalia Jackson was reportedly the one to encourage King as she shouted to him, “Tell ’em about the dream, Martin.”
Forbes reported that after Jackson shouted her encouragement to the leader, King then pushed the rest of the written speech to the side.
Clarence B. Jones, who wrote in his book “Behind the Dream” about the experience of attending the historic occasion, wrote that King “shifted gears in a heartbeat, abandoning whatever final version he’d prepared ... he’d given himself over to the spirit of the moment.”
Jones continued that he leaned over to the person next to him in the crowd and told them, “These people out there today don’t know it yet, but they’re about to go to church.”
And the rest of that speech, as some reportedly say, is history.
The effect of the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech on America
The National Archives at New York City explained, “The culmination of this event was the influential and most memorable speech of Dr. King’s career.”
During King’s era, the Freedom Fighters, as they were known then, followed King’s principle of nonviolence within their fight for racial equality, according to the Deseret News.
Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis reportedly said that with his own involvement with the Freedom Fighters efforts, “we believed that if we were the children of an omniscient creator, and we took a stand based on faith, that the forces of the universe would come to our aid.”
History reported that the “triumph at the feet of Lincoln brought favorable exposure to his movement,” which then, combined with the Freedom Fighters efforts, eventually helped land the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
King saw this law as “nothing less than a ‘second emancipation,’” and from this law, “many rights and protections were extended to various groups in America, including women, veterans, the disabled and LGBTQ,” according to the Deseret News.