Politics How The Voting Rights Act Came To Be And How It's Changed No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. 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. 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 the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.Īnd they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. Throughline Bayard Rustin: The Man Behind the March on Washington (2021) This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.īut we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. This note was a promise that all men - yes, Black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 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've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.Ĭode Switch The Power Of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Anger And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in 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 their captivity.īut 100 years later, the Negro still is 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. Martin Luther King Jr.: Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
#Mlk i have a dream speech archive#
National Archives/Hulton Archive via Getty Images and other civil rights leaders gather before a rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug.
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