I Have A Dream, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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.

This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to 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 and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to 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 and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed...

With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.