F I Never Read the Word Mana Ever Again It ll Be Too Soon
(CNN)"I have a dream this afternoon that my four picayune children will non come up up in the aforementioned immature days that I came up within, but they will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not the color of their skin."
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke these words in 1963, but this was not the speech that would go down as one of the near important addresses in US history.
King spoke these words in Detroit, two months before he addressed a crowd of nearly 250,000 with his resounding "I Take a Dream" speech at the March on Washington for Liberty and Jobs on August 28, 1963.
Several of Rex's staff members actually tried to discourage him from using the same "I have a dream" refrain once again.
Every bit we all know, that didn't happen. Simply how this pivotal speech was crafted is just one of several interesting facts about what is one of the most important moments in the 20th century in the Us:
one. MLK's speech about didn't include 'I accept a dream'
Rex had suggested the familiar "Dream" spoken communication that he used in Detroit for his accost at the march, only his adviser the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker called information technology "hackneyed and trite."
And so, the night before the march, King'southward staff crafted a new speech, "Normalcy Never Again."
King was the last speaker to accost the crowd in Washington that solar day. As he spoke, gospel vocaliser Mahalia Jackson called out to King, "Tell 'em nigh the dream, Martin."
Then he paused and said, "I nevertheless have a dream."
Walker was out in the audition. "I said, 'Oh, due south---.'"
"I thought information technology was a mistake to utilise that," Walker recalled. "Only how incorrect I was. It had never been used on a world stage earlier."
The rest, of course, is history.
two. The march almost didn't include any female speakers, either
It was but after pressure from Anna Arnold Hedgeman, the but adult female on the national planning committee, that a "Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom" was added to the official program.
It took farther convincing to take a woman lead information technology.
Daisy Bates spoke in the place of Myrlie Evers, the widow of slain ceremonious rights leader Medgar Evers. Bates, president of the Arkansas NAACP who played a primal role in integrating schools in Petty Rock, told the crowd: "We volition walk until we are free, until we can walk to whatsoever school and take our children to any school in the United States. And we volition sit-in and nosotros will kneel-in and we volition lie-in if necessary until every Negro in America can vote. This we pledge to the women of America."
Earlier, Josephine Baker, an internationally known American entertainer who had moved to France to find fame, addressed the crowd. Dressed in a military jacket draped with medals for her contribution to French resistance in Earth War II, she spoke in very personal terms nearly freedom:
"Y'all know I accept ever taken the rocky path. I never took the easy one, but as I become older, and as I knew I had the power and the forcefulness, I took that rocky path, and I tried to smooth it out a little. I wanted to make it easier for you. I want you to take a chance at what I had. Only I do non want you to have to run abroad to get information technology."
Women had been key to the civil rights movement -- Diane Nash, Ella Baker, Dorothy Pinnacle and many others -- but were only included in the program that day after 1 woman spoke up.
3. The most prominent white speaker was called the 'white Martin Luther King'
Walter Reuther was the head of the United Automobile Workers, which provided role space, staff and funding for the march in Detroit and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He was the seventh speaker listed on the program, and shared his remarks to the oversupply.
"We will not solve education or housing or public accommodations every bit long every bit millions of Negroes are treated as second-class economic citizens and denied jobs," he said.
In 1998, Time Magazine included him in its list of Builders & Titans Of The 20th Century. Irving Bluestone, Reuther'south former administrative banana, shared this popular story to explain who Reuther was at the March on Washington: "Continuing close to the podium were two elderly women. Every bit (Reuther) was introduced, one of the women was overheard asking her friend, 'Who is Walter Reuther?' The response: 'Walter Reuther? He'due south the white Martin Luther King.'"
iv. An openly gay homo organized the march in less than two months
Bayard Rustin is "the about important leader of the civil rights movement you probably have never heard of," every bit LZ Granderson put it in a CNN cavalcade. Not only did he organize the march in a matter of months, Rustin is credited with teaching King nigh nonviolence. He also helped raise funds for the Montgomery omnibus cold-shoulder and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Council.
During the time, his sexual orientation was known, and he was frequently in the background to prevent it from being used confronting the move.
Rustin, who died in 1987, was honored with a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2013.
five. Information technology wasn't the starting time planned 'March on Washington'
Labor leader and civil rights advocate A. Philip Randolph had threatened a "March for Freedom" on the National Mall in 1941 to pressure then-President Franklin Roosevelt to provide equal opportunity for defense jobs. Randolph hired Rustin to organize part of the march, which they felt was the only way to prompt action after numerous appeals.
Information technology worked: The march was called off subsequently Roosevelt established the Fair Employment Practices Committee, abolishing racial discrimination in hiring.
six. The march was a Hollywood star-studded event
Pop actor and singer Harry Belafonte used his star power to assistance bring other celebrities to the March on Washington. Likewise reaching out to the stars themselves, Belafonte went to many of the studio heads in Hollywood to go prominent actors and actresses temporarily released from their duties so they could participate.
He was successful. The Hollywood list of attendees that day read like a who's who of A-listers: Marlon Brando, Sidney Poitier, Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Jr., Charlton Heston and Burt Lancaster, who also gave a speech.
But having the Hollywood stars there wasn't just for show or for increased media attention. It also helped calm President John F. Kennedy'south nerves about the march.
"I believe that their presence did a lot to assuage people who were preoccupied with the fact in that location could be violence," Belafonte said.
"One of the things that I said in my conversations with the Kennedys in discussing why they should be more yielding in their support of our sit-in was the fact that there would be such a presence of highly profiled artists -- that that alone would put feet to residuum," he added.
"People would exist looking at the occasion in a far more than festive way."
vii. One march worker barbarous asleep during MLK's speech
Back in 1963, higher student Patricia Worthy took a job answering phones for the March on Washington'south planning office. She had 10 telephone lines to answer, and they rang from the time she walked in until she left for the twenty-four hours.
"I remember one twenty-four hours I'll never forget, I heard someone say, 'Where is this young lady who handles the phone?' And finally I looked up, and at that place he was -- Dr. Rex -- and he said, 'I want to meet this immature lady. She has put me on the hold twice, and hung up on me once, and I want to know who she is.' "
Worthy said she was "so embarrassed," but then the ceremonious rights icon gave her a hug.
By the day of the march, she was so tired, she dozed off and accidentally slept through the celebrated march and the "I Take a Dream" oral communication.
Everything worked out for her in the cease: Worthy had a successful career in police and academia.
8. Another hitchhiked all the way from Alabama just to take MLK check in on him
Robert Avery and two of his friends hitchhiked nearly 700 miles from Gadsden, Alabama, to Washington to participate in the march.
Avery, who was 15 years old at the time, was no stranger to the dark side of the civil rights movement. A few months earlier, he was struck by a cattle prod wielded past Alabama police during anti-segregation demonstrations in Gadsden.
The three youths arrived in the nation's capital a week before the march after three days of hitchhiking, and they were put to work making signs for the issue.
At ane point, King walked in and asked for them. He had been in Gadsden the night before, and their parents had asked the civil rights leader to check on them.
King saturday down with the three and talked to them for about 20 minutes, asking them about their dreams, Avery later recalled.
ix. 'I Accept a Dream' beat JFK's 'Ask not what you can practice' speech
There's no doubt that Rex's speech was the virtually memorable office of the March on Washington. Information technology'due south still taught in school, and memorized past children, one-half a century afterward.
But how does information technology compare confronting other pivotal speeches by 20th century leaders, such as John F. Kennedy or Franklin D. Roosevelt?
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/21/us/mlk-i-have-a-dream-speech/index.html
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