I Have a Dream
Delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves . . .
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Drum Major Instinct
Delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, on 4 February 1968
This morning I would like to use as a subject from which to preach: "The Drum Major Instinct." And our text for the morning is taken from a very familiar passage in the tenth chapter as recorded by Saint Mark . . .
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I've Been To The Mountaintop
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this speech in support of the striking sanitation workers at Mason Temple in Memphis, TN on April 3, 1968 -- the day before he was assassinated.
Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy in his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. It's always good to have . . .
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Letter From A Birmingham Jail
In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. was hauled off to jail in the aftermath of the Birmingham confrontation with Public Safety Commissioner "Bull" Connor and municipal authorities. When King was criticized by a group of white clergymen who blamed him for precipitating the violence, he penned a subdued, but passionate letter of reply to his colleagues, smuggling it out on toilet tissue, the margins of newspapers, indeed any scrap of paper available to him.
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and African are moving with jet like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep . . .
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Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Eulogy
Delivered at funeral service for three of the children -- Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, and Cynthia Diane Wesley -- killed in the bombing. A separate service was held for the fourth victim, Carole Robertson.
This afternoon we gather in the quiet of this sanctuary to pay our last tribute of respect to these beautiful children of God. They entered the stage of history just a few years ago, and in the brief years . . .
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Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech
This afternoon we gather in the quiet of this sanctuary to pay our last tribute of respect to these beautiful children of God. They entered the stage of history just a few years ago, and in the brief years . . .
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Where Do We Go From Here?
Annual Report Delivered in August of 1967at the 11th Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta Georgia.
Dr. Abernathy, our distinguished vice president, fellow delegates to this, the tenth annual session of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, my brothers and sisters from not only all over the South, but from all over the United States of America: ten years ago during the piercing chill of a January day and on the heels of the year-long Montgomery bus boycott, . . .
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MIA Mass Meeting Speech
Address to First Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) Mass Meeting, at Holt Street Baptist Church in December 1955 shortly after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man.
My friends, we are certainly very happy to see each of you out this evening. We are here this evening for serious business. We are here in a general sense because first and foremost we are American citizens and we are determined to apply our citizenship to the fullness of its meaning. We are here also because of our love for democracy, because of our deep-seated belief that democracy transformed from thin paper to thick action is the greatest form of government on earth . . .
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The Purpose of Education
As I engage in the so-called "bull sessions" around and about the school, I too often find that most college men have a misconception of the purpose of education . . .
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The Negro and the Constitution
Negroes were first brought to America in 1620 when England legalized slavery both in England and the colonies and America; the institution grew and thrived for about 150 years . . .
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Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction . . .
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