IHaveADream

演讲:Martin Luther King

名称:I Have a Dream

I am happy to join with you today

in what will go down in history as

the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American,

in whose symbolic shadow we stand today,

signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

This momentous decree came as a great

beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves

who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.

It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.

One hundred years later,

the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled

by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

One hundred years later,

the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of

a vast ocean of material prosperity.

One hundred years later,

the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society

and finds himself an exile in his own land.

And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words

of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence,

they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men, yes,

black men as well as white men,

would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life,

Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note,

insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.

Instead of honoring this sacred obligation,

America has given the Negro people a bad check,

a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.

We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds

in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so,

we've come to cash this check,

a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom

and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of

the fierce urgency of Now.

This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off

or to take the tranquilizing ** of gradualism.

Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.

Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation

to the sunlit path of racial justice.

Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands

of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment.

This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent

will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning.

And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam

and will now be content will have a rude awakening

if the nation returns to business as usual.

And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America