Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech
On this day · 28 August 1963
On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King turned a scripted address into an improvised vision that reshaped the civil rights era.
On August 28, 1963, more than a quarter of a million people gathered near the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a mass demonstration pressing the federal government for civil and economic rights. The closing speaker was Martin Luther King Jr.
King was originally allotted only a few minutes, but he spoke for roughly 16 minutes. Reading from a prepared text, he set it aside near the end and returned to a refrain he had used before, urging the crowd toward a nation where his children would be judged “by the content of their character.” The gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, seated behind him, is often credited with calling out, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin!”
More than 3,000 members of the press covered the march, and the address was broadcast live across the country.
Later ranked the top American speech of the 20th century in a 1999 survey of scholars, it remains a defining moment of the movement.
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