I have a dream
Forty years on, and the speach of Martin Luther King powerfully resonates.
On August 28 1963, Martin Luther King delivered a speech that made America — and the whole world — sit up and listen. Gary Younge explains how it came aboutand why it is as important now as it was then.
Like all great oratory its brilliance was in its simplicity. Like all great political speeches it understood its audience. And like all great performances it owed as much to its delivery as its content. But what made this performance stand out was that it was both timely in its message and timeless in its appeal.
Forty years on, Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” is still a great speech. Still pertinent, even though many of its immediate demands have been met. Still relevant, beyond America’s borders and the racial context that it addressed. So universal in its humanism that it spoke to Catholics in Northern Ireland during the ’60s, black South Africans in the townships during the ’70s and ’80s and speaks to the Roma in eastern Europe today.