The American Dream: Martin Luther King Jr. (Full Transcript)

Full text of Martin Luther King Jr. speech: “The American Dream” delivered on July 4^th, 1965

TRANSCRIPT:

Martin Luther King Jr.

I would like to discuss some of the problems that we confront in the world today, and some of the problems that we confront in our own nation by using as a subject: The American Dream.

I choose this subject because America is essentially a dream. It is a dream of a land where men of all races, of all nationalities, and of all creeds, can live together as brothers.

The substance of the dream is expressed in these sublime words:

“We hold these truths to be self- evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Now, we notice in the very beginning that at the center of this dream is an amazing universalism. It does not say some men, but it says all men. It does not say all white men, but it says all men, which includes black men.

It does not say all Gentiles, but it says all men, which includes Jews. It does not say all Protestants, but it says all men, which includes Catholics.

That is something else that we notice in this American Dream, which is one of the things that distinguishes our form of government with some of the other totalitarian systems.

It says that each individual has certain inherent rights that are neither derived from nor conferred by the state. They are gifts from the hands of the Almighty God.

Very seldom, if ever, in the history of the world has a socio-political document expressed in such profound, eloquent, and unequivocal language, the dignity and the worth of human personality. While the American Dream reminds us that every man is a heir of a legacy of worthfullness.

But ever since the Founding Fathers of our nation dreamed this dream, America has been something of a schizophrenic personality. On the one hand, we have proudly professed the noble principles of democracy. On the other hand, we have sadly practiced the very antithesis of those principles.

Indeed, slavery and segregation have been strange paradoxes in a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal. But now more than ever before, America is challenged to realize its noble dream, for the shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of an anemic democracy.

And the price that the United States must pay for the continued exploitation and oppression of the Negro and other minority groups, is the price of its own destruction.

There are approximately 2 billion 700 million people in the world, and the vast majority of these people live in Asia and Africa. For years most of these people have been dominated politically, exploited economically, segregated, and humiliated by some foreign power.

Today, they are gaining that independence. More than 1 billion 600 million of the former of 1 billion 900 million colonial subjects have their independence today, and they are saying in no uncertain terms that racism and colonialism must go.

So in a real sense our hour is late, and the clock of destiny is ticking out, and we must act now before it is too late. It is trite but urgently true that if America is to remain a first-class nation, she can no longer have second-class citizens.

I must rush on to say that we must not seek to solve this problem merely to meet the Communist challenge. We must not seek to do it merely to appeal to Asian and African peoples.

In the final analysis, racial discrimination must be uprooted from our society because it is morally wrong. It must be done because segregation stands against all of the noble precepts of our Judeo-Christian heritage.

It must be done because segregation substitutes an I-It relationship for the I-Thou relationship, and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. And so this problem must be solved not merely because it is diplomatically expedient, but because it is morally compelling.