Does the Grandeur of Dr. King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech Blind Us to His Core Message?

It's one of the most famous speeches in the world, but most people don't seem to know what's at the heart of its greatness.

By now lots of people know it was Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson who shouted “Tell them about your dream, Martin!” during the 1963 March on Washington. I wrote about it myself during last year’s 60th anniversary of the march. But I have a little more to say on the subject.

If it wasn’t for Mahalia Jackson, one of the most famous speeches in American history might have been a lot less famous. And possibly forgotten altogether. 

Dr. King’s speech was supposed to turn on the theme of an unpaid promissory note to America’s Black citizens, which he did, in fact, include in his remarks from the Lincoln Memorial that day. 

The dream part wasn’t in Dr. King’s prepared text. But Mahalia Jackson and others had heard him speak of it. 

He just needed to be reminded of something that was already deeply embedded in his soul. His dream for an America that lived up to the promises of its foundational documents. 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivering his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, 1963 via Wikimedia Commons

Those beautiful words — 

I have a dream — have become so famous in the 61 years since 1963 that most people identify Dr. King mainly by them. 

Ask any school child who the man was, and they will tell you — he had a dream and was assassinated. 

The trouble with repeating something for 61 years is that it loses some of its power to influence and inspire. 

Not all of it. I certainly get choked up whenever I hear it. But it no longer has quite the same quality as when the words first broke loose from Dr. King’s great soul. 

But the grandeur of that speech casts a great shadow. 

So great it tends to obscure what may be Dr. King’s core message. 

King’s “Dream” speech retains its power and deserves our attention because the man who gave it lived by the core values expressed in a different speech.

His “But If Not” sermon, delivered five months before his death.

Focusing on the Dream speech without understanding the core commitment that gave it light and power overshadows the source in order to favor the effect. 

We love the Dream speech — but can we also love the existential commitment to “right for the sake of right” without which the dream would fizzle?

Dr. King’s “But If Not” sermon is about an act of civil disobedience. It’s about a king who tells three slaves to bow down and worship an idol. 

The slaves refuse

and the king threatens to throw them into a fiery furnace. Undaunted, the slaves tell the king they believe God will deliver them from the furnace. But even if He doesn’t, they won’t be bowing down to any false idols any time soon. 

The story is a two-minute read in the Bible’s Book of Daniel. But Dr. King’s interpretation of it is just as stirring as “I Have a Dream.” 

Because it’s in that sermon that he says, don’t do the right thing because you want to avoid hell or go to heaven. Do it because it’s the right thing — and here’s the hard part — be willing to die for it if necessary.

But it gets even deeper

“And I say to you this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and so precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.” Here’s the rest of the quote:

You may be 38 years old as I happen to be, and one day some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause — and you refuse to do it because you are afraid; you refuse to do it because you want to live longer; you’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you’re afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you or shoot at you or bomb your house, and so you refuse to take the stand. 

Discomfort

It’s at this point that the listener begins to get uncomfortable. Because what Dr. King is describing in this scenario is something most people have had to deal with at some point in their lives.

But what makes it even more uncomfortable is that Dr. King is not finished yet. And we know it. Here’s the next part:

Well you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90! And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. You died when you refused to stand up for right, you died when you refused to stand up for truth, you died when you refused to stand up for justice.” — Martin Luther King, Jr., “But If Not”

So why talk about “But If Not” on the 95th anniversary of Dr. King’s birth? Because Dr. King could not have lived the life we celebrate on this 38th King holiday. In fact, there would be no holiday. Why? Because he would not have become the Martin Luther King, Jr., we love and commemorate today.

Power source

I believe that his “I Have a Dream” speech gets its power from “But If Not.”

Never mind that Dr. King delivered “But If Not” five years later. He had been living it ever since he agreed to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. He was living it when he wrote the Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Living it every time he was arrested. And every time he received a phone call from some racist in the middle of the night threatening his family and telling him they were coming for him. 

History’s hindsight

We know with the hindsight of history that the man who delivered that famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 would be dead in less than five years. He’s standing there talking about something he’s willing to die for. And in fact does.

It’s important to remember the Dream speech. It’s also important to understand that King’s dream was rooted in the American dream that all men are created equal.

It’s equally important to believe, as King did, that injustice and oppression can be transformed into “an oasis of freedom and justice.” We need to remember those things, especially now.
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But in that remembering, isn’t it a good idea not to forget that you don’t just come up with words like that because a Gospel singer yells at you from the audience.

The only way you can talk like that is to live like that. Maybe it’s time to step outside the shadow of “I Have a Dream” and connect with the light that gives it such power.

©2024 Andrew Jazprose Hill | All rights reserved

Thanks for reading/listening. And have a Happy King Holiday!