Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, on which the nation remembers and celebrates the words and actions of the late moral and civil rights leader who spoke, against bitter opposition, for hope, equality, and the encompassing power of a justice-based love.
It’s a good time to watch and listen to his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, which he delivered on August, 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to an audience of more than 250,000 during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Give yourself seven minutes to experience this profound and remarkable speech, which combines poetry, musicality, and theater in an oration of hope for the nation’s soul. It lives on both for its searing and ultimately uplifting content and for the power and eloquence of its delivery. It is an American masterpiece combining art, politics, and culture, and its artistry often goes unnoted. You could chart the rhythms and rises and tonalities of these seven minutes on a musical score: Martin’s voice is an instrument of beauty, always on the very brink of singing.
And still, we are striving for the mountaintop.
One Response
So glad you posted the “Speech” here. I listened to it again, in tears, this time hearing it as music and imagining what the score would look like. How wonderful if this could happen!