The Rest Is History - 359: Martin Luther King's Dream

Episode Date: August 13, 2023

"Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” Arguably the most celebrated speech of the 20th century, Martin Luther King Jr.’s address in front of the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963 was a defining moment in the American Civil Rights movement, and to this day remains a symbol of hope, equality, and social change. Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss Martin Luther King Jr., how he became involved in the Civil Rights movement, and the unfolding of the March on Washington. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and

justice. Because I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. That was the Reverend Martin Luther King speaking from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the 28th of August, 1963, to a vast

audience of almost perhaps it's been estimated a quarter of a million people who had joined a great march on Washington to demand civil rights for black people in America. And Dominic, we're just down from the Lincoln Memorial. We've just been up to visit the very spot on the steps where Martin Luther King gave that speech. So if you hear people walking by, if you hear dogs, noise of wind, planes, whatever, that's why. We're on location. And the theme of today is that speech, probably one of the most famous speeches in American history. And one of the most famous speeches, certainly in the 20th century? I think so, absolutely. So it's often voted, certainly in the 20th century i think so absolutely so it's often voted certainly in polls in america will vote at the greatest speech of all time i think it's one of the few

speeches that has genuinely global cachet yeah because it has a resonance far beyond america oh yeah you can see it it's written on there are bits of it written in on walls on the west bank uh at tiananmen square in 1989 protesters held up placards with the words, I have a dream. So yeah, absolutely. It has this resonance. And also where we are, Tom, I mean, people come to the Lincoln Memorial and come to the spot where King gave his speech. So they're visiting not just Lincoln, but they're visiting King. And King's Memorial is very close to where we're sitting now. And for people in America, for a lot of people, this is a place of pilgrimage. These are two great saints.

Okay. So you've given me an opening there. Right. You often criticize me for shoehorning sacral Christian references in. Yeah. But Martin Luther King is a reverend. And I think it's really important to understanding the tone, the timbre, the resonance of the speech to recognize that King is a preacher. Yes, absolutely. So what we're going to do today is we're going to come to the speech, and we're going to come to the great drama of King stepping up to the podium to address this

audience. By the way, not just the quarter of a million people around him, but millions of Americans watching on television. Yeah, because it's on network news, isn't it? And they switch to broadcast it live. To cover that part of the speech. Exactly right. Exactly right. So we'll talk about the speech itself a little bit later. But maybe first, Tom, what we should do is give a bit of context. Because this is not just a story about one bit of rhetoric. It's a story about a man and a moment. And it's a story about a point in American history that actually, we haven't really covered in the rest of history. Well, we talked about the American Civil War, didn't we?

And then we talked about the way in which segregation continued despite the victory of the Union and the abolition of slavery. Exactly. Into the 20th century and still in the 50s. Oh, yes. And into the 60s, there is segregation in many states, particularly across the South, between black and white American citizens. Yeah, absolutely.

So what were called the Jim Crow laws that were brought in after the failure of Reconstruction at the end of the American Civil War. So these were, I mean, to our non-American listeners who are not familiar with this, this would be the American equivalent of a kind of apartheid. So, you know, black people can't sit in the same part of the bus. They can't sit at lunch counters. They can't go to the same schools. They can't go to universities. All of these kinds of things. All of these in the same part of the bus they can't sit at lunch counters they can't go to the same schools they can't go to universities all of these kinds of things or at least the same universities we'll give a bit of context on this i know it's a massive subject it's sometimes thought

the civil rights movement just comes out of nowhere that's not right there had always been civil rights campaigners from the 1890s onwards there had always been people pushing back trying to push back of course it's very difficult because i mean the southern governments have almost untrammeled power there is violence there's constant violence there is lynching so kukwax clan burning crosses and and all that it's not just the clan though it's also you know the police yeah the the entire infrastructure of oppression but from the second world war something obviously changes and that's partly because of the service of African Americans in the war. There's also a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1954. Listeners who are familiar with this story will know exactly what I'm talking about. It's called Brown versus the Board of Education. And this begins to desegregate schools. So it basically says segregated schools, separate but equal as they were called are not right they're unconstitutional they are wrong um but but Dominic something else that changes presumably is television and radio and mass media yeah because you were talking about how difficult it is for the campaign

to kind of take wing but if it's being amplified on television yeah then presumably opportunities for for mass movements to grab attention are massively enhanced. That's absolutely right. And there's one other outside aspect to this, which is, of course, the Cold War. This is very bad publicity for the United States when it's claiming to stand for freedom against Soviet communism. Democracy and liberty. You have a series of incidents which you won't, you know,

they're all worthy of podcasts in themselves, by the way. I'm sure we'll do them all eventually. The most famous one is, of course, the storyosa parks and the montgomery bus boycott in 1955 so rosa parks who refuses to accept her second class status on the bus lots of our listeners not just americans will be familiar with that story the montgomery bus boycott is the first moment where you really see the emergence of this this character dr martin luther king jr as a as a national figure he's quite a short man king actually um but he has there's something about him even at that point as you said he's a christian he's a clergyman he's a baptist preacher and he carries this immense moral

authority when he speaks it's with the cadences of the Bible. Yes, absolutely. He speaks with a prophetic voice. I mean, literally a prophetic voice. He is invoking images from the Hebrew prophets. And he's speaking all the time. So in 1963, just to anticipate, he gives a speech practically every single day. I think something like 350 speeches in a 365-day year. So he's brilliant at it. And we'll come on to how he crafts his speeches to appeal

to different kinds of audiences. Absolutely brilliantly done, by the way. But to go back to the context, the momentum of civil rights accelerates in the late 1950s, early 1960s. You have a whole series of incidents, the forced integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas at the end of the 50s, wave of sit-ins starting in North Carolina in 1960, the so-called freedom riders, so people who ride, they are a group, they will ride interstate buses in 1961 to try and desegregate the buses. A very famous story in 1962, a student called James Meredith, who became

the first black student at the University of Mississippi. But something changes in 1963. So this is the year. So there's a real, it's a kind of ratcheting up of the momentum. So there are a couple of things. Very famously, the desegregation of the University of Alabama. Now, the governor of Alabama, Governor George Wallace, lots of listeners will have heard his name, he becomes the champion of segregation.

And he literally stands, Tom, in the schoolhouse door, and he says, I fling down the gauntlet in the face of tyranny, standing up to the federal government, and we stand for segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. Because that's the important thing to understand, isn't it? That both sides think that they're right. And we, in the 21st century, we can clearly see the ways in which Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement are right.

But it is important to understand that for large numbers of white Americans, they think they're in the right. And that they're campaigning against tyranny and oppression. The tyranny of the federal government. That's exactly right. Then they say they stand for states' rights. Absolutely, that's exactly what they say and there was a definite sense in the spring and summer of 1963 so in the months that lead up to this moment of tension rising and martin luther king has been in the news a lot so in 1963 in the spring of 1963 a newspaper like the new york times are running more stories about civil rights than they

had done in the in the previous years put together it's a sign of the extraordinary salience that this has you mentioned television there's this one televised moment that goes not just around american households but around the world and this is king goes to birmingham alabama or we would say birmingham yes we would but they would say birmingham so he goes to birmingham which is a notoriously violent segregationist place it's been nicknamed bombingham because so many civil rights activists are being attacked yeah have been there have been so many bomb attacks on civil rights leaders homes and he goes there and he leads these protests and the authorities in birmingham most famously this police chief who beyond parody he's called eugene bull connor right bull connor sets dogs on the protesters

and the protesters are children aren't they well not at first king is jailed at one point and he writes this famous... Well, because he's famous, the letter from Birmingham Jail. From Birmingham Jail. This letter from Birmingham Jail where he says, he writes it on toilet paper, and he writes it at the margins of a newspaper in his cell. And he talks about the fierce urgency of now. And he says, we have waited too long.

We have been patient too long. This is the moment. And then when he comes out, he does this thing where he doubles down and he enlists children black school children he puts them in in the protest puts them in the front line and of course that makes you mentioned telly that makes for extraordinary television that they are the people on whom the dogs the water cannons the full force of the authorities, that wrath is being vented. Yes. And so you were saying about how people in the Kennedy administration are kind of very sensitive to the way in which these kind of scenes are not conducive to America presenting

itself as the bulwark of liberty. Yes, absolutely right. I mean, that's kind of like the stuff you're getting in apartheid South Africa. Oh, terrible scenes. A huge embarrassment for Kennedy. So John F. Kennedy, he's been in since January 1961. But the real dilemma for him is that his electoral coalition includes the white South. Yeah, of course. He is treading a very fine line. And actually, he and his brother Robert, so Robert Kennedy is the Attorney General responsible for law and order. And Robert Kennedy is saying at this point, I wish they they would just pipe down i wish this would all go away why

can't they just do they need to go to the toilet in the same toilets as everybody else do they need to ride on the same buses that you know can't they just you know because they're frustrated the kennedy administration because they can see they can see the moral force of the case i think although they don't quite understand it but they can sort of see it intellectually but also they're terrified about going too far and alienating their white southern base but there are two kind of strains of white opinion that presumably martin luther king is trying to um recruit to his side and one is that kind of progressive liberalism that kennedy stands for but there is also, isn't there, a sense that King

is trying to shame white Southern Christians. So that letter from Birmingham Jail, I mean, he has this incredible phrase that Jesus was an extremist for love. And he compares himself to St. Paul being jailed. And there is this idea that if only he can awaken a sense of the spirit rush that he literally believes in that the spirit descends and animates him and he can get white christians to share in that spirit rush then who knows what might happen right and he really i mean he he absolutely believes this it's a very religious man tom i mean this isn't window dressing i mean he he's a he's not a baptist preacher for nothing and he's the son of a Baptist preacher. I think he's the third generation of Baptist preachers. So everything that he says is infused with the cadences of the Bible.

Yeah. And so the Christian idea that he is articulating is that you don't obtain justice by doing unjust things. Right. So nonviolence and so on. We must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force yeah but there are people in the civil rights movement who don't necessarily agree with that exactly so there's another constituency and there's another aspect king king is not just a preacher he's a politician now that may sound odd because he's obviously never elected to political office but he's a political actor political agent and he has a black constituency that he cannot afford to lose and throughout 1963 as the pressure is rising and these violent scenes are shown on television there are people in the

black community who are saying enough of this yeah so malcolm x so malcolm x yeah who is not a christian has converted to Islam. Correct. And Islam offers perhaps a slightly more muscular approach to obtaining justice. And his appeal is slightly different. His heartland is different. It's in the big cities of the North. So New York, for example, Chicago, places like that.

And his attitude is very different. He says, I am for violence. If nonviolence means we continue postponing a solution to the american black man's problem just to avoid violence right and there are a lot of people who actually as 1963 as the summer progresses there are people who are saying to king you're too slow you're too you're too kind of lily-livered we should you know that you talk about the fierce urgency of now well if you mean it we have to do something right so martin luther king is actually treading quite a fine line isn't he because on the one hand he has black activists who may be tempted to side with malcolm x's arguments

that that non-violence is a busted flush and on the other hand martin luther king needs to appear to white liberals yes um to try and recruit them to the cause as well liberals and white moderates i would say so people who are not particularly political so people who basically haven't really thought about it want the problem to go away he has to mobilize their outrage he has to get them outraged he has to get them to see the world through his eyes correct exactly exactly right so that's the context and now let's talk a little bit about the platform because what gives him the opportunity it's not king's idea to have this march there has never been a march like it so now we live in a world where the idea of huge hundreds of thousands of people

descending on washington is quite common so it might be the tea party it might be trumpists it might be civil rights campaigners it might be black lives matter it might be it hasn't really happened before in 1963 and the idea comes from an older generation of civil rights leaders so the guy who's responsible for it's this guy called a philip randolph now philip randolph was born in florida in 1889 and he was a union leader he was a black man he organized the brotherhood of sleeping car porters i mean that's a great name it's a great name i mean it's an album it's a brilliant name for a group yeah isn't it progressive rock yeah progressive john peel would have loved it john peel would have loved that exactly so um and he's actually quite a nostalgic figure because he wears these

dark wool three-piece suits he's a very in the south he's an immensely dignified man god he must be sweated a lot right so he had first come up with the idea of the march on washington in 1941 so as america is about to enter the second world war and he wanted the march to be about segregation in the military which was then segregated and in the defense industry and he was persuaded out of it by franklin d ro Roosevelt, who said, you know, not a good idea with a centering the war, divisive. And Roosevelt had, as a sort of quid pro quo, had said, I will desegregate war industries. Not the military, Truman did that. So Roosevelt, yeah, they did a deal and the march never happened. But by 1963, Philip Randolph wants to have another go. He's now 74. And he thinks this is one lastandolph wants to have another go he's now 74 and he thinks this

is one last chance for him to have his dream he dreams i mean this is his lifelong dream he has a dream he does have a dream tom and by his side is a man who is a bit younger than him who's in his 50s called bayard rustin he's a fascinating figure he's an extraordinary so he's incredibly tall he's very eccentric he has a sort of mop of hair he's a quaker he's a fascinating man. So he's incredibly tall. He's very eccentric. He has a sort of mop of hair. He's a Quaker. He's a fascinating man. Like Richard Nixon. But he's very unlike Richard Nixon.

In other ways. In other ways. He's a pacifist. He is a communist. And he is also openly gay at a time when that is very unusual. So in 1953, he'd actually been arrested in Pasadena and charged with lewd vagrancy for having sex with two men in the back of his car and he'd been sent to jail for 60 days now as you will know tom a lot of the civil rights leaders are intensely christian and are very uncomfortable with bayard rustin but

he's a brilliant organizer and absolutely devoted to the cause but i think also it's fascinating because he seems as a kind of intersection point between the the christian and the liberal right development of civil rights but he's also a fascinating figure because he's a link to the communist i mean he's a communist and actually although it embarrasses some of the civil rights leaders to admit it the communists are very active in civil rights campaigns because of course the communist party is an avaredly anti-racist party and there are people who, the communists are very active in civil rights campaigns because, of course, the Communist Party is an avaredly anti-racist party. And there are people who are American communists who are very idealistic and are absolutely devoted to the cause of equality and brotherhood and all this sort of stuff. So it's an alliance. It's an alliance. A coalition.

So they basically pitch the idea to the other civil rights leaders, to the people from the National Urban League, from the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, from the Congress of Racial Equality, from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which is called SNCC, which is very active. It's called SNCC.

That's a great name. And it's very active in the South, doing a lot of the campaigning in the South. And at first, actually, all the other civil rights leaders say, I don't know, they're not terribly enthusiastic. But King is keen on it, isn't he?

Because it's the centenary of the Emancipation Proclamation given by Abraham Lincoln. Yeah, in whose shadow we are sitting. We're currently sitting. Yeah. And so he can see the kind of resonance of that. Because again, just as he's trying to get white Christians to recognize the justice of what he's saying in Christian terms,

so also, you know, with this anniversary, he can get patriotic Americans to recognize that he's only asking for black people what is written into the Constitution. Well, you're anticipating brilliantly, Tom, I have to say, one of the great themes of his speech, which is that we're asking for the American promise to be redeemed. We're asking for the check to be cashed.

That's exactly right and i think i mean people sort of joke and they say basically having but he was a tiny bit ambivalent about it at first but by midsummer he basically has convinced himself that it was his idea all along i guess you need that kind of self-confidence yeah to do what he does so at the end of june they go to see john f kennedy now kennedy in the wake of Birmingham, has committed himself to civil rights and civil rights legislation, even though he knows it will make him exceedingly unpopular in the white South. We're jumping ahead here. We're going to do a podcast about Kennedy's assassination in November. When he arrives in Dallas, one of the reasons he is anxious is

because he knows there are so many white Southerners who loathe him because of his identification with civil rights and actually when they meet kennedy kennedy is is still dragging his feet a bit so he says to king privately i don't want you to do this if it's involved with a load of communists you know this is very bad for you it's bad for me by association they have this meeting with kennedy and they say to him listen it's probably going to happen and it's going to happen anyway let's talk about it anyway we're going to do it whatever it's better if we do it kind of in association with you if it makes sure it's peaceable and they also say to him if you don't ally with us you're handing the initiative to the radicals you know to malcolm x to these kinds of people it's much better if we're on the same page. But the sort of unspoken quid pro quo

is that they will sideline the more radical elements of their own group, their own coalition. And do they do that? They do do that. So they meet in Harlem in early July.

So it's Philip Randolph, the organizer, the sleeping car porter's chap, and the other leaders of the groups. And they say to him, Bayard Rustin, Mr. Pasadena lewd vagrancy yeah he has to be pushed into the shadows he can't march at the front and you have to spearhead this yourself and he says fine i'll do that as long as you allow me to pick my own

deputy and they say okay fine he says great my deputy is bayard rustin so bayard rustin he's in the background he does all the planning and actually he's brilliant at it tom because i said no one has ever planned a march like this and he does it and all the details so it's bayard Rustin, he's in the background, he does all the planning. And actually, he's brilliant at it, Tom, because I said no one has ever planned a march like this. And he does it. And all the details. So it's Bayard Rustin who works out banal things, but they're really important. How many toilets they need, how many blankets. Is he the one who, the brilliant detail you've given in your notes for me,

they advise people not to put mayonnaise in their sandwiches because it spoils easily in the sun and can cause diarrhea. Yeah. Such attention to detail. Well, you have to have attention to detail about these things, because otherwise it won't work. The interesting thing, of course, a lot of people are very much against this, by which I mean white people.

So with the public, this is a fascinating detail. Among the public, twice as many people have an unfavorable view of the march as have a favorable view of it. White Southern representatives are absolutely outspoken so there's a guy from south carolina representative william dawn he says this is reminiscent of the mussolini fascist black shirt march on rome it's reminiscent of the socialist hitler's government sponsored rallies in nuremberg so so the whole compare your enemies to hitler is really kicking in. Yes, very much. A very famous, uh, segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond,

who was still Senator from South Carolina at the age of 320. He said, this is all Bayard Rustin's doing. He is a communist, a draft dodger and a homosexual. Didn't he published a photo of him talking to Martin Luther King in the bath? In the bath. Yeah. But, um, the authorities have all kinds of, you know, contingency panic measures. Extraordinary, actually.

So this is from the Guardian columnist, Gary Young, wrote a brilliant book about the I Have a Dream speech in the March on Washington. This is from his book. He says, all elective surgeries in Washington, D.C. were cancelled because they thought there would be so much violence, there'd be so many people in the hospitals. Sales of alcohol are banned the judges are told to prepare for criminal hearings to run throughout the night congressmen tell their female staff stay out of the city because

there's going to be trouble there's going to be violence all this kind of thing the pentagon has got 19 000 troops but no dogs but no the concession. Because they have learned that... That doesn't look good. A couple of just small things before we approach the day. One, there are no women. It's a really, really interesting... So no Rosa Parks. So no Rosa Parks.

No, no, no. And why is that? Well... I mean, is it strategic? Is it chauvinist? No, it's not strategic. It's chauvinist. Yeah.

It's chauvinist. I mean, let's just be blunt about it. The civil rights movement's leadership are of a generation where they think the women will basically make the as we would say in britain they'll make the tea but not not with mayonnaise exactly they won't make the sandwiches but yeah so there is a tribute to negro women fighters for freedom as they are called but it is delivered by a man and the women so rosa parks and co are called upon to take a bow, but they're not allowed to say a single word. So that kind of tells its own story. And so that is then setting up one of the movements in the 60s that will be massively influenced by this, which is feminism.

Exactly. And indeed, gay rights. Yeah. I mean, part of feminism comes out of people who've been involved in 60s movements who say, I'm actually sick of making the tea. So let's get to the day itself, 28th of august 1963 very hot day right from the early morning it's obvious this is going to be a massive deal so thousands and thousands of people arriving by train a hundred buses an hour coming through the baltimore harbour tunnel so by 10 o'clock or so the place is absolutely rammed it's obvious that the crowd is much blacker than people had anticipated.

So they'd thought they would, you know, might be 50-50 or something. Actually, it's about a fifth white, four-fifths black. The number of African-Americans who turn up amazes the organizers. They knew it'd be big, but they didn't know it would be this big. There are far more children than they expected, far more older people. Also, right from the start it's obvious the mood is nothing it's much more it's not quite celebratory that's wrong but it is hopeful it's yes it's passionate it's proud it is it's not violent you know for a lot of people it's actually

a really moving well enjoyable day so bob dylan sings to the crowd i wouldn't enjoy that tom because i don't like bob dylan yeah yeah yeah all that you were banned from doing um impersonations but i think we can allow you bob dylan um but jane bears she said that the most striking memory she had was looking out at the crowds and seeing all the church hats it's there's a sacral experience perhaps for people i mean people have come as they would to church. But some very unexpected people are there. Charlton Heston was there. That's unexpected, isn't it? That's unexpected. Burt Lancaster, Burt Lancaster's great liberal campaign, Billy Wilder, Sidney Poitier, Marlon Brando, another of your victims, Tom. Our producer, Theo, is pointing at you saying, do not do your Marlon Brando voice. I'm not going to.

Josephine Baker? Marlon Brando's walking around carrying an electric cattle prod to symbolize police brutality. That's method acting. It is method acting taken to a ludicrous extreme, I agree with you. So, there are going to be 16 speakers and King is going to go last.

There's been an argument about whether or not King should go last and the organizers said, well, listen, who wants to go after him? Because he is known as the best orator. Because he is already known by far as the best. So in a sense, it's the position of honour.

You're the one who will be kind of last. But isn't there also a slight sense that that might be the graveyard slot? Because towards the end of the day, people start drifting away, get tired, a bit hot, mayonnaise is kicking in. You've had too much mayonnaise. Exactly.

So, I mean, you and I here, we're here in June. I mean, I've been to Washington in August. It is unbelievably hot and humid and stifling. And even if you got

your church hat on, that sun is beating down. It is beating down. So one person dies of a heart attack. More than a thousand people are treated by the Red Cross. There's no violence at all.

And I suppose also if people come in on the train, they've got to get the train back. They've got to get the train back. Exactly. And get the train back exactly and the speeches are fine but people heard them all before they're not that great and norman mailer he put it very well he said there was an air of subtle depression by the afternoon of wistful apathy which existed in many like a baseball game after it's obvious that one team is going to win basically so it's just a sort of sense you know you know how it. Like at a festival or anything,

you've been for the day out, it's the late afternoon, everyone's very hot, kind of time to go home, and number 16, Martin Luther King, steps up to the podium, and as he steps up, Tom,

there are people already leaving. There are people who've retreated from kind of where we are now, they've gone under the trees to escape the sun, there are people who are streaminged from kind of where we are now they've gone under the trees to escape the sun there are people who are streaming back towards the railway station and this is his moment his appointment with destiny and this of course is the perfect time for us to take a break okay so we will see you back in a few minutes for martin luther king's appointment with destiny. live tickets head to therestisentertainment.com that's therestisentertainment.com

hello welcome back to the rest is history we are well we're having a dream aren't we dominic in the company of martin luther king who is um addressing the this great movement of of civil rights campaigners activists who've descended on washington in the summer of 1963 um they're all they're all a bit hot all a bit tired they've got to get back home so martin luther king is now stepping up he's got to grab their attention and he's got to grab the attention of america as well yeah because you know he he is being filmed correct this is going to be going out across the United States. Exactly right. So the networks have been covering the march off and on all day, but both ABC and NBC interrupt their regular programming

to come to Martin Luther King at the platform. And he has been told by the other civil rights leaders, many of whom are quite jealous of him, they have told him, you have 10 minutes max. If you go over 10 minutes, and one of them says to him, Roy Wilkins says to him, you go over 10 minutes, we'll cut off your microphone. You know, don't mess around. So the pressure is on that. King, he is, as we said before, he's the third generation preacher. He was a brilliant speaker at kindergarten. He could recite bits of the Bible from memory.

And he's a, you know, I mean, he's a very, very learned theologian as well. Yeah. Very learned man. But he doesn't write his speeches all himself. He has people who help, because we said he gives 350 speeches a year. So he has two aides who help him with this,

Clarence Jones and Stanley Leveson. And they've been working on this speech for three to four days. Now, normally when he does his speeches, he has kind of interchangeable elements. So he does a bit of this, bit of that, like a preacher, like a vicar would, like a clergyman. Very used to speaking, you know, depending on the moments as the mood takes him. He will use this paragraph, that section, because they know this is the first time, really, that he is speaking not just to his base,

but to millions of Americans who will watch on TV who've probably never really heard him speak before. Yeah, exactly. So he can actually use riffs that he's used before. And the dream, the idea of having a dream is one of those riffs, right? Yeah. So they're in his hotel suite the night before, and they are actually debating, will he use that dream stuff?

Because he has used it. He'd used it in a prayer service in georgia in 1962 he'd used it in north carolina at the end of 1962 he'd used it quite a lot the dream idiom throughout the summer of 1963 so he'd been at a fundraiser in chicago a week earlier and it said i'd have a dream that one day right down in birmingham alabama where the home of my friend was bombed last night, white men and Negro men, white women and Negro women will be able to walk together as brothers and sisters. And some people said to him, some of his aides actually said to him, I think that's a bit cliched. I think that stuff about the dream is a bit tiresome. So one wyatt t walker actually explicitly said to him do not use the lines i have a dream it's too trite right but i mean that's because presumably

these guys have been in king's entourage all this time and so they've heard him do it loads and loads of times like me listening to your anecdotes well i mean it's like a band who have been playing in in clubs and pubs and you know above whatever, suddenly being given a stadium. And you're playing to millions of people who've never heard you before. So you want to go with your greatest hits. Right, this is what our producer, Tony, who's lurking in the background here, he says to us about the rest of you. I'm not comparing us with Martin Luther King, Tom.

That would be absolutely ridiculous. Just to be absolutely clear, I'm not comparing us. But yeah, you bring out the big guns. But actually, King stays up till four o'clock in the morning, the night before the big march. Well, he says, I am now going upstairs to my room to counsel with my Lord, i.e. Christ. And he's giving a political speech, but he's also giving a religious speech. But he decides, not going to use it.

They're right. It's tired. Or does he, though? I mean, that's what he says. Yeah, it is what he use it they're right it's too it's tired or does he though i mean that's what he says yeah it is what he says you're right there's a little bit of controversy about this isn't there fascinating you know we'll come to maybe how that i have a dream moment it's kind of kicks in it's fascinating because i have views on it it's fascinating for us who um you know we both do public speaking that this is a wonderful case of being able to go through a speech and to to see how the rhythm because he's of course he has a text but king is used to departing from his text let's go back to that moment he's introduced by philip randolph philip randolph is an enormous

man very torn and lanky king is about five foot six sort of short and stocky he stands there at the podium there's polite applause not rapturous applause and then he starts speaking and by the way his voice he has a tremendous voice yeah so he has this you've banned me from impersonating it i have banned you and i absolutely under no circumstances can you're allowed to but it is a tremendous it's this baritone yeah yeah rolling baritone and he starts the reference to the guy in whose shadow we're sitting. He says, five score years ago, a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

That's Abraham Lincoln. And right from the start, you see, he's anchoring this in American history, heritage, the great traditions of America. So Gary Young, whose book on the the speech i couldn't recommend more highly he points out that if you listen to an audiobook the audiobook is 150 words a minute if you give a slideshow presentation on zoom 100 words a minute but king is speaking at 77 words a minute so it's slow every word judged like a preacher in a pulpit tom which is what he is yeah that's exactly what he's doing and he has this device which he uses a lot anaphora yes you're familiar with a rhetorical yeah so the rhetorical device where you repeat

the same phrase again and again at the beginning of successive sentences 100 years later the life of the negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination 100 years later the negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. 100 years later, again and again, reminding people Lincoln made this promise and it has not been fulfilled. But it's not just Lincoln, is it? It's the founding fathers.

Right. You're absolutely right. It's the Constitution. This is really the point of issue between him and Malcolm X, because Malcolm X is saying black Americans should emancipate themselves from the entire structures of white America. King is saying, no, we are holding white America to its own promises, its own ideals, its own kind of best aspirations. Absolutely right. And this is an argument that reverberates to this

day among campaigners for black rights some will say we're just asking that america live up to its own professed ideals and others will say america is poisoned from the start by the original sin of slavery yeah and king doesn't say the latter he explicitly says it's this wonderful metaphor the metaphor for which some actually some of his aides and some civil rights leaders say this speech ought to be remembered which is the metaphor of cashing a check he says in a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check and he says when the architects of our republic wrote the declaration of independence in the constitution they were signing a promissory note that all men yes black

men as well as white men you notice the emphasis on men which people wouldn't say today will be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and he says america has defaulted on this promise and we have come to cash it a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice and then there's a bit about the sort of urgency which you talked about so another anaphora now is the time to make real the promises of democracy now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley now is the time you know a very standard rhetorical technique the crowd like that all very good he's bringing in some biblical stuff so there's stuff about rolling waters you must be familiar with yeah just this

rolling down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream from uh the book of amos i'm not massively familiar with the book of amos that's tremendous brilliant yeah great book it's all great stuff so so now he's moving towards the end of the speech. And actually, this is how it's meant to end. So he's meant to end with these resounding words that one day will join hands and sing, free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last. And had he ended then...

It wouldn't be remembered. It probably would not be remembered. It was fine. It was like standard Martin Luther King civil rights speech. It was absolutely fine. And then, I mean, there was a dispute about what happened. Some people say, like you just did, like you suggested earlier,

he was always actually going to use the dream stuff. He was just saying that because his aides were giving him a hard time about it. I'm not saying that. I mean, you know, he's a practiced orator. So he will have in his head riffs that he might be ready to use if he feels that the time is right

but i think more than that he has a literal conviction that the spirit can descend and can animate him with pentecostal fire right he can speak with tongues and i think he literally believes this and i was kind of reading through the speech and then reading through this moment where it suddenly has a liftoff. And weirdly, I was reminded of a poem by the Welsh poet R.S. Thomas, which may seem a million miles away from the civil rights movement and everything. But R.S. Thomas is writing about a Methodist preacher. He's talking about this abandoned chapel that says that an amazing thing happened in this chapel. Here once on an evening like this in the darkness that was about his hearers, a preacher caught fire and burned steadily before them with a strange light, so that they saw the

splendor of the barren mountains about them and sang their amens fiercely, narrow but saved in a way that men are not now. That's very good. And I think that that's kind of what happens he he catches fire yeah you know and and fire is the descent of the spirit in the christian tradition well it wouldn't be the rest is history unless i attempted to puncture enthusiasm with of course banal cynicism of course so there's a story that is often told that a gospel singer who was supposedly king's favorite gospel singer called mahalia jackson that she shouted up to him tell them about the dream martin tell them about the dream it's like a heckle yeah and which you would be used to by the way if you're a baptist preacher because people would often do that it'd be call

and response and she shouts tell them about the dream and he starts improvising as he would have done and i'm sure you're right tom there are a lot of people in particularly in britain and europe who may be listening to this podcast, who are not religious, who will discount this aspect of King and his personality. But you're absolutely right. He is a committed believer. He would be the kind of person who would believe that he's seized by the Holy Spirit. Yeah, but I mean, if you want the Spirit to descend on you, you have to prepare. So he may have these kind of phrases ready in his head, waiting for the fire to catch. Right, which is what happens. I mean, he gets the sort of the heckle.

He's got very close to the end of his 10 minutes, by the way. So in the end, he ends up speaking for about 12 minutes or so. But he doesn't get cut off. But he doesn't get cut off. And you do get this sense that suddenly he catches fire. I mean, he would describe that he would fly off and then he'd be looking for a place to land. So this is him flying, taking off. he catches fire. I mean, he would describe that he would fly off and then he'd be looking for a place to land. So this is him flying, taking off.

And then he gets going and he says, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It's a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I think that's really important because that obviously, again, is that appeal to moderate white viewers who believe in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed we hold these

truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and the crowd kind of cheers and then this and they're starting to get excited they cheer and then and then he's off and then there's this because the cheers presumably pep him up pep you up, of course. This is electricity now. He's firing. He's firing on all cylinders. I have a dream that one day on the Red Hills of Georgia, that's his home state, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the Temple of Brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, where he's just been, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. And then these very famous lines. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. And then I have a dream today. And the audience, you can tell, they're really, really hooked at this point.

And he goes on and on, and then he gets to this point. I have a dream. Well, he has a direct biblical quote, isn't it, Tom? Yeah, from Isaiah. That's one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places made plain,

the crooked places were made straight, and the glory of the lord shall be revealed and all flesh will see it incredibly powerful so what's that from that from isaiah the book of isaiah and the thing is that he is invoking their millennia worth of aspirations for justice and these are aspirations that are shared by white christians exactly so people listen to it who have been hitherto unmoved by the civil rights movement, there's nothing here that they could possibly object to. It's incredibly, you know, to us as white Britons reading this or watching the footage, I think it's still incredibly

moving. It's so powerful. Sorry, there's a dog just there in the background. The amazing thing about it, as Gary Young points out in his book, is that this passage, the bit for which the speech is remembered, is just 301 words long. So it's less than a fifth of the total speech, and it lasts for two minutes and 40 seconds, which is a sixth of the whole. So it's remembered for this one passage. And then actually the end, I think the end is very moving. So then he goes back, back brilliantly he finds a way to end that incorporates both this stuff and the end that he had planned and he he takes it back to this idea of patriotism so he goes back to this song this hymn my country tis of thee sweet land of liberty of thee i sing which believe it or not tom the tune is god save the king

wonderful very stirring for those of us brilliant he started singing that yeah very unexpected the speech could i mean this is the great takeaway from the rest this episode of the rest is history the speech would have been even better if it's sung but it's also got it's got the rhythms of all those kind of folk singers yeah Absolutely. And he ends with this geographical tour of the Union. Let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring

from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. So he's gone through the North and then he goes South. But not only that,

let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill of Georgia, let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee, let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring. And then he goes on and he comes back to the point

where he was always planning to end, with the day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholic, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, free at last, free at last, thank God almighty. We're free at last. It's actually really stirring.

Yeah, I mean, just hearing you do it sends shivers down the spine. I mean, not... Chilling shivers, Tom. No, I feel an urge to go out there and fight for freedom. Well, Jonathan Kennedy, who was watching it, who had never seen a full, or heard a full Martin Luther King speech, apparently watched it in the Oval Office on TV and he said

to his aides, he is good. Yeah, and Kennedy would know because Kennedy's a great orator too. He is damn good. Interestingly, I mean, the fascinating thing is that after that, and we've said how moving it is, did it convert anybody? And the brutal answer is no, it didn't actually. I accept that.

But I think that it does contribute to what will become the vibe of the 60s. It does, of course. All you need is love, all that kind of thing. It does, of course, but not initially. No, but it's a slow burner. It's a slow burner. So at the time, do you want to know what the Jackson, Mississippi clarion ledger said? The next day, the front page was a

photograph of the litter left in washington and the headline was washington is clean again with negro trash removed so that i mean there's a stunning shocking thing to read of course gives you a sense of polarization i think that that sense of, well, all you need is love, is something that palpably reverberates through the 60s. It does, but among people who already agree with it, Tom, I think, to some degree. Of course, but often these are people who are young. And so the youth spirit of the 60s, I'm sure, you know, because it's the intersection point between what is quite a conservative tradition, the biblical tradition of the black southern churches, and the kind and the youth quake of the 60s counterculture. And Martin Luther King's career obviously will continue throughout the 60s until his assassination in

1968. And when he gets killed, he's seen as being a martyr not just for his Christian beliefs, but for the spirit of 60s progressivism as well, don't you think? I do think that, Tom, but I think you of 60s progressivism as well. Don't you think? I do think that, Tom. But I think you've jumped very quickly from 1963 to 1968. Well, that's because we're running out of time, Tom. Well, that is because we're running out of time. But it's our podcast, Tom. We can do what we like.

But I think what that slightly misses is that the fact that the impact of the speech at the time wanes very quickly. I understand that. So it's barely discussed in 1964. Well, there is this question about, would the speech be remembered were it not for the assassination? Absolutely. Because by 1966, King is saying in speeches,

well, actually, I'll tell you what happens in 1966. He gives a speech in Chicago and he is booed by young black men. He's yesterday's man. The action is with the more radical. So the Black Panthers are on the scene now. And afterwards, he says, I had preached to them about my dream, but they were hostile,

watching the dream that they had so readily accepted turn into a frustrating nightmare. In other words, they're sick of hearing about the dream. They're sick of hearing all this when their hopes are constantly being frustrated. And actually, by the time he dies in 1968, he himself has become much more radical.

He's speaking about economic justice, about basically socialism. And he's speaking out against Vietnam, isn't he? and he's speaking out against vietnam and he's speaking out against against vietnam and some people so some of his aides and his friends say he shouldn't actually be remembered for the i have a dream speech he should be remembered for his later more radical speeches attacking the war in vietnam attacking imperialism and capitalism and that that is truer to the man he became because one of the paradoxes of this is that even though that i i have a dream speech is absolutely part of the kind of the

kaleidoscope of 60s radicalism it's kind of part of the mood music in the long run it does seem that it is an expression of the civil rights movement that is most congenial to conservatives agreed so yeah you know that's why basically the Martin Luther King who's being celebrated at the Lincoln Memorial and at his feet is the Martin Luther King who gives the I have a dream speech, not the Martin Luther King who is making speeches against Vietnam. Yeah, absolutely. Tom, I couldn't agree with you more. And that's what a lot of King scholars say, that actually Martin Luther King and the emphasis

on this particular speech, it's a kind of way of sanitizing him and making him less nuanced, more moderate, less unsettling, less confrontational of a figure. And that actually, if you were being really harsh, now we've talked about how moving the speech is. If you were being really harsh, and I'm not saying I would necessarily take this line, you would say this is the rhetorical equivalent of John Lennon's Imagine.

You said about the spirit of the 60s, Tom, that it is kind of let's all be friends, join hands. But I mean, my repost to that would be, I know you hate John Lennon, I know you hate Imagine, but Imagine is an incredibly popular song that has created a kind of mood music for millions of people. And I don't think that that's necessarily an insult no well i like martin luther king i think the i have a dream speech is tremendously powerful i wouldn't compare it with imagine because as you rightly say i absolutely despise imagine with every fiber of my being but um why this is remembered is because i think the american dream is obviously very powerful the life liberty and the pursuit of happiness the rights and stuff and i think the speech captures this sense that the dream has not been fulfilled but it's still you know it doesn't

do to be unduly cynical about it that there is a promise there as an outside someone who's not american i think that a dream in which people of all races and backgrounds can live harmoniously is much better than one in which it's taken for granted that injustice is so kind of shot through the fabric of american history and its constitution that there's no you know there's no solution yeah i agree with you that to me is its power that it's not so it's not cynical it's not it's optimistic it's optimistic offers hope the optimism the hope and of course the religious side of it is what gives it the texture, isn't it? The biblical quotations, the rolling cadences

and so on and so forth. Tom, we've talked long enough. So King, it took him, what, 12 minutes to deliver this beautiful piece of oratory. We've spoken for far longer and come up with nothing remotely comparable. Well, that's what critics are all about, isn't it? Talking at enormous length about something

that is delivered in much punchier form. That they can't possibly hope to reproduce. But it's also a reflection of the fascination of the broad theme of the civil rights movement and how it impacts, not just on America, but on the West more broadly. But also the fascination of Martin Luther King as a character.

And so we've focused very much on one speech but I do think we should come back and do some episodes on his life and his career and on the civil rights movement and other aspects of it we'll undoubtedly come back to this well on that bombshell Tom

I think we should stroll off down to look at some more memorials more monuments it's an amazing place, Washington DC steeped in history and we're going to go off and have a look around. If the Washington Tourist Board are listening,

we do take donations. Yeah, we are available for hire. And on that... Commercial. On this utterly inappropriate and incongruous note, which is absolutely what you expect from the rest is history.

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