Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” Could Have Had A Different Name

The Speech Martin Luther King Gave In 1963 Could Have Been Named Several Things Besides “I HAVE A DREAM”

During this month when many of us acknowledge the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it is inevitable that we hear and see clips from his “I Have a Dream” speech. Most people, including those who were not born at the time King made the speech in 1963, know very well those passages which mention the “dream.”

Keep in mind that King didn’t write a title for his speech, and if he had I wonder if he would have called it “I Have a Dream.” That was the theme that stood out to a few journalists who heard it and, by the close of the network newscasts that evening and The New York Times publication the next day, Martin’s historic speech had a title: “I Have a Dream.”

But for me –as I heard it that day and reviewed it hundreds of times since – I realize that the “March on Washington” speech could have taken one of many names if you based it on his naturally Baptist-trained use of alliteration and repetition. He, after all, was a preacher articulating in the manner that Black ministers do.

So, while the fervent repetition of “I have a dream . . . ” certainly resonated with the more than 250,000 people standing before him at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington and the millions listening around the world, there were several other repetitive lines which could have been used as the title of Martin’s speech.

Even without the repetitive lines, I think one of the early themes about the nation having defaulted on a promissory note to black people, the speech could have been called “Insufficient Funds: Trying to Cash a Bad Check from America.”

But to those Baptist-instinctive repetitious lines (uttered more than twice) that could have been the title of the speech, I suggest a few, using at least one example:

• “Now is the time . . . ” – Martin started four sentences in a row with that phrase, including, “Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.”
• “We cannot be satisfied . . .” – A variation of that phrase was uttered four times while concluding, “No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
• “With this faith . . .” – After his “dream,” Martin said it was “with this faith” that he would return to South, and, “With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.”
• “Let freedom ring” – Of course the climax of the speech was not “I have a dream,” but his conclusion for wanting freedom to ring from the “mighty mountains of New York” and “heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania” to “Stone Mountain of Georgia” and “Lookout Mountain of Tennessee,” concluding with:

“When we allow freedom to ring – when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, Free at last, Great God a-mighty, We are free at last.”