Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

A quarter of a million people, black and white together, gathered in the summer heat yesterday at the Washington Monument and continued forward to the Lincoln Memorial in honor of the Washington Freedom Rally.

One of the many speakers in the rally, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech, on the steps of Lincoln Memorial, where he cited the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Gettysburg Address, and insisted on America to rejecting inequality and remembering the promises of the founding fathers.

King started with his prepared speech, saying he was there to "cash a check" for "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." He warned the fellow protesters not to allow their creative protest to turn into physical violence. "Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force."

Towards the end of his speech he departed from his script, shifting into the "I have a dream" theme, drawing on both the "American dream" and religious themes, speaking of an America where his children "will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

The crowd cheered as he repeated his phrase, "I have a dream"

King spoke that freedom ring from the hilltops of New Hampshire, the mountains of New York and Pennsylvania, and even more, from Georgia's Stone Mountain.

He followed this with an exhortation to "let freedom ring" across the nation, and concluded with, "And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,