"
I Have a Dream" is a 17-minute
public speech by
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered on August 28, 1963, in which he called for
racial equality and an end to
discrimination. The speech, from the steps of the
Lincoln Memorial during the
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was a defining moment of the
American Civil Rights Movement. Delivered to over 200,000 civil rights supporters,
the speech was ranked the top
American speech of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address.
According to
U.S. Representative John Lewis, who also spoke that day as the President of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, "Dr. King had the power, the ability, and the capacity to transform those steps on the Lincoln Memorial into a monumental area that will forever be recognized. By speaking the way he did, he educated, he inspired, he informed not just the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations."