Two things
usually ignored about Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech given 54 years ago today:
John Kennedy tried to stop it and gospel singer Mahalia Jackson got King to to talk about his dream.
Gary Younge described it in the British Guardian
in 2003:
It was June 22 1963, when Kennedy met with the nation's civil rights leaders. Just one month before, segregationists in Birmingham, Alabama had turned hoses and dogs on black teenagers. Only a few days later the president went to Germany where he slammed Soviet repression at the Berlin Wall, calling for freedom abroad that he could not secure for black people at home. The state of America's racial politics had reached the stage of domestic crisis and international embarrassment. Plans for a march on Washington for jobs and freedom on August 28 organized by the black union leader A Philip Randolph, were already under way. Kennedy was preparing a civil-rights bill that would antagonize white southerners in his own party who were opposed to integration. "I may lose the next election because of this," he told them. "I don't care."
The truth is that he cared very deeply. He asked them to call the march off. "We want success in Congress," said Kennedy. "Not just a big show at the Capitol." Randolph refused. "The Negroes are already in the streets," he told Kennedy.
King, who deferred in age and experience to Randolph did not speak until the end of the meeting. "It may seem ill-timed," he said. "Frankly, I have never engaged in a direct-action movement that did not seem ill-timed." The march went ahead. By the time Kennedy came back from Europe he had decided that he would try to co-opt what he could not cancel. He declared his support for the march, hailing it as a "peaceful assembly for the redress of grievances".. . .
By most accounts it was not [King's] greatest speech. Indeed, he had actually started to wind it up without its signature passage when the singer Mahalia Jackson, who stood nearby, encouraged him to go on. When he began to tell the crowd: "Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama," she urged him: "Tell them about your dream Martin. Tell them about the dream."
With encouragement from the audience King went on to draw upon a version of a speech he had made many times before (he had delivered it to insurance executives in Detroit only a week before) which centered on his dream of a society in which race was no longer a boundary to individual opportunity and collective strength.
Mahalia Jackson was standing in the row right below King when she made her suggestion. She was an extraordinary figure in her own right and when she died, some 50,000 people walked past her coffin to pay their respects. Here she is singing What a Friend We Have in Jesus
It was June 22 1963, when Kennedy met with the nation's civil rights leaders. Just one month before, segregationists in Birmingham, Alabama had turned hoses and dogs on black teenagers. Only a few days later the president went to Germany where he slammed Soviet repression at the Berlin Wall, calling for freedom abroad that he could not secure for black people at home. The state of America's racial politics had reached the stage of domestic crisis and international embarrassment. Plans for a march on Washington for jobs and freedom on August 28 organized by the black union leader A Philip Randolph, were already under way. Kennedy was preparing a civil-rights bill that would antagonize white southerners in his own party who were opposed to integration. "I may lose the next election because of this," he told them. "I don't care."
The truth is that he cared very deeply. He asked them to call the march off. "We want success in Congress," said Kennedy. "Not just a big show at the Capitol." Randolph refused. "The Negroes are already in the streets," he told Kennedy.
King, who deferred in age and experience to Randolph did not speak until the end of the meeting. "It may seem ill-timed," he said. "Frankly, I have never engaged in a direct-action movement that did not seem ill-timed." The march went ahead. By the time Kennedy came back from Europe he had decided that he would try to co-opt what he could not cancel. He declared his support for the march, hailing it as a "peaceful assembly for the redress of grievances".. . .
By most accounts it was not [King's] greatest speech. Indeed, he had actually started to wind it up without its signature passage when the singer Mahalia Jackson, who stood nearby, encouraged him to go on. When he began to tell the crowd: "Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama," she urged him: "Tell them about your dream Martin. Tell them about the dream."
With encouragement from the audience King went on to draw upon a version of a speech he had made many times before (he had delivered it to insurance executives in Detroit only a week before) which centered on his dream of a society in which race was no longer a boundary to individual opportunity and collective strength.
Mahalia Jackson was standing in the row right below King when she made her suggestion. She was an extraordinary figure in her own right and when she died, some 50,000 people walked past her coffin to pay their respects. Here she is singing What a Friend We Have in Jesus
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