Martin Luther King Jr.
Happy Martin Luther King Day
"Tell them about the dream, Martin. Tell them about the dream."
His friend Clarence Jones recalls the extraordinary moment that changed the course of U.S. history. It was a speech that shaped the future of the world. Civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.'s words of fifty years ago have reverberated through the decades.
This vibrant young man stood before more than a quarter of a million people at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC and told how he "had a dream".
In what would become one of the most defining speeches of the 20th Century, he called for an end to racism with such fervour, it excited and inspired not just his audience then, but generations to come.
Watching in the wings that day was his friend Clarence Jones, who the night before had jotted down seven paragraphs of ideas for the speech. Clarence was stunned to hear how his words were being repeated verbatim, but he no longer recognised them as his own because he says:
"Dr. King breathed life into those words far beyond the letters, commas and sentences."
Then suddenly gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, one of Dr. King's closest friends called out:
"Tell them about the dream, Martin. Tell them about the dream."
Dr. King dropped his notes and ad libbed as he told the crowd [...] of his hope that black and white people would one day live together equally, all the while punctuating his points with the words, "I have a dream".
Half a century on Clarence, 82, has tears in his eyes as he recalls the extraordinary moment that changed the course of American history.
Christopher Bucktin
excepted from Mirror News: www.mirror.co.uk
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