Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.”īut we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.
This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. Promissory note (n): a signed document containing a written promise to pay a stated sum to a specific person on a specific date And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.
It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.īut one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.įive score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Why do you think this speech was delivered in this location?.In his speech, King pleaded for civil and economic rights for African Americans and an end to racism in the United States. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial as a dramatic ending to the march. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place on August 28, 1963, and drew a record turnout of 250,000 protesters. Martin Luther King, Jr., “to make real the promise of democracy.” After an important moral and political victory in Birmingham, Alabama, movement leaders were eager to build momentum and planned to march on Washington, DC. The year 1963 marked the centennial anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the campaign for civil rights for African Americans meant, in the words of Dr. Use this primary source with the Freedom Riders Narrative The March on Birmingham Narrative the Black Power Narrative the Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 1963 Primary Source the Civil Disobedience across Time Lesson the The Music of the Civil Rights Movement Lesson and the Civil Rights DBQ Lesson to discuss the different aspects of the civil rights movement during the 1960s.
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