I was reminded this morning that today, August 28, is the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. I participated in that event, and for at least the last 40 years, I have lamented the addition of the “I Have a Dream” part of Martin Luther King’s speech.
King had ended several speeches before August 28, 1963, with the “I Have a Dream” closing. He had used it two months earlier in Detroit at the culmination of a march led by the celebrated Rev. C.L. Franklin, Aretha’s father. Without that part, perhaps we would have experienced–then and since–more consideration of the meat of the address and the event.
The purpose of the March was to advocate for civil and economic rights of African Americans. The title of the event was The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Thus, the later emphasis on economic justice was not new, as many have claimed.
In the speech, he said such things as the following:
“It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”
The preceding statement is quite different from the “person” celebrated every January 15. On his birthday King is often hailed as a dreaming peace-seeker instead of one who frequently said, “Peace is not just the absence of tension, peace is the presence of justice, and until there is justice there will be no peace.”
Aldon Morris informed me today that Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, King’s Executive Director of the SCLC, had said in an interview with Morris that he and other members of King’s leadership team tried to talk King out of giving that same old “I Have a Dream” speech they had grown tired of hearing. And I suspect some of these leaders thought the “I Have a Dream” segment might not have been consistent with the overall message of the March.
Walker indicated that King had even rebuffed Bayard Rustin, organizer of the March and a speechwriter and organizer for King when Ruffin tried to write a different speech. King objected saying Rustin was the better organizer, but he was the better wordsmith.
King was probably correct in the short term, but I would argue that his associates were right in the long run, because the celebration of the “I Have a Dream” oration has severely distorted remembrance of the work of Martin Luther King and the SCLC.