"I Have a Dream" is a public speech by American activist Martin Luther King, Jr.. It was delivered by King on August 28, 1963, in which he called for an end to racism in the United States. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the speech was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement. Beginning with a reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed millions of slaves in 1863,[2] King examines that: "one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free".[3] At the end of the speech, King departed from his prepared text for a partly improvised peroration on the theme of "I have a dream", possibly prompted by Mahalia Jackson's cry: "Tell them about the dream, Martin!" In this part of the speech, which most excited the listeners and has now become the most famous, King described his dreams of freedom and equality arising f...
