Choir Notes

I Have a Dream

From Music and The Spoken Word

Delivered By Lloyd D. Newell • Program 4296

On a blustery winter evening in 1956, Martin Luther King attended a church meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, leaving his wife and baby at home. Near the close of the meeting, a man burst into the room and announced that King’s house had been bombed.

King rushed home to find his wife and baby safe; the bomb had exploded on the front porch. But throngs began gathering, and trouble was brewing. Some in the crowd had guns in their hands and thoughts of retaliation in their minds. The police arrived to a situation quickly getting out of control. Then King stepped in front of the angry swarm and said, "I want you to go home and put down your weapons.

A hush fell over the group as he continued, "We must meet hate with love.” The mood changed. One man shouted, "Amen,” and another added, "God bless you,” and eventually the crowd dispersed.1

In the years to come, Martin Luther King led boycotts to desegregate buses; he marched to desegregate housing and schools, and he marched on Washington to press for civil rights legislation. His speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial still stirs us today. "I have a dream,” he said, "that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”2

That dream helped change the hearts and minds of millions. And his vision continues to change things. Today, years after his death, Martin Luther King’s words still mark the cadence of the "march to the realization of the American dream.”3

1 See Martin Luther King Jr., Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958), 125–28.

2 "I Have a Dream,” in Lewis Copeland and others, eds., The World’s Great Speeches, 4th ed. (1999), 753. 

3 "Our God Is Marching On,” in James M. Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. (1986), 229.