“I Have a Dream”

I had heard Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ quote many times before. I had not, however, heard the rest of the speech. I was well aware that MLK was seen as an excellent writer and public speaker, but I had no idea of just how great he was with words. As a person who already shared MLK’s views on racial injustice, I went into the film expecting to feel the same way coming out, but I was very surprised at how moved I was by the speech. Martin Luther King spoke in a way that didn’t just make you agree with him, but made you feel the need to take action.

Martin Luther King said “We can not turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, ‘When will you be satisfied?’ We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of unspeakable horrors of police brutality.” MLK asked for a world where people of different ethnic backgrounds were treated as equals by the government and the rest of America, but fifty years after The March on Washington, African-Americans are still being harassed and hurt by officers of the law. It has been 150 years since the end of the Civil War and we still can’t get our act together. However, that does not mean that we can’t achieve equality; Martin Luther King said “1963 is not an end but a beginning.” We are yet to reach the end, but we have come very far and we can keep going.