On this day in 1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech to more than 250,000 people assembled in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
This speech and the associated March on Washington were one of the defining moments for the Civil Rights Movement. And, scholars of American rhetoric rank this speech as one of the greatest examples of eloquence and substance in the history of the nation.
If any historians out there know the answer to this, I am curious to find out whether the date of the March on Washington was chosen to deliberately coincide with the eighth anniversary of the horrific murder of African-American teenager Emmett Till? He was murdered by white racists down in Mississippi exactly eight years prior to “I Have a Dream.”
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