A new early recording of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” sentiment has been unearthed by researchers working on a documentary about the preacher and civil rights advocate.
The recording was made eight months before King made his historic speech in front of 250,000 people gathered at Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Aug. 28, 1963.
King had preached about dreams since 1960. The earliest record was an NAACP speech called “The Negro and the American Dream,” the subject of which was the distance between the American Dream and the reality experienced by Black Americans.
The “I Have A Dream Speech,” which was delivered during the march on Washington, was an amalgam of several previous speeches and ideas. The speech was originally called “Normalcy, Never Again,” but the speech came to be referred to as “I Have A Dream” because of the impression King’s delivery made on hearers.
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