The person who wound up with the typewritten speech given by King is retired college basketball coach George Raveling. Singer Mahalia Jackson urged King to tell the audience “about the dream,” and King went into an improvised section of the speech.ġ0.

King almost didn’t give the “I Have a Dream” part of the “I Have A Dream” speech. There were no speakers after King, as organizers led the audience in a pledge and gave a benediction.ĩ. Rabbi Joachim Prinz spoke right before King. There were 10 speakers on the official program for the public event at the Lincoln Memorial: All of them were men. People came from all over the country, and few arrests were reported.Ĩ. An estimated 250,000 people attended the March. Roy Wilkins asked the marchers to honor Du Bois with a moment of silence.ħ. B.' Du Bois, the co-founder of the NAACP, died on the day before the event at the age of 95 in Ghana. Attorney General Robert Kennedy enlisted the Army Corps of Engineers to fix the system.Ħ. An expensive sound system was installed for the event, but it was sabotaged right before it. Almost no one could clearly hear King’s speech. But President Franklin Roosevelt averted the march by signing Executive Order 8802 in June, 1941, banning discrimination in the federal government and defense industries.ĥ. In 1941, organizers were planning a march to demand desegregation in the U.S. It also wasn’t the first threatened March on Washington by civil rights leaders. The organizers didn’t agree on all the issues, either, but they did agree that people should march together at the event.Ĥ. Prominent objectors included Malcolm X and Strom Thurmond.

The March was not universally supported by activists. Kennedy signaled his approval publicly in July when he was assured it would be a peaceful event.ģ. Kennedy met with civil rights leaders such as King, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young and student leader John Lewis about a proposed march. Marches had been proposed before the Kennedy speech and Evers’ killing, but the events forced the issue. That same night, NAACP leader Medgar Evers was murdered in Mississippi.Ģ. Kennedy made a nationally televised address calling for a drive for more civil rights. The official event was called the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” On June 11, 1963, President John F. Here are 10 facts about the march and the events that led to the speech.ġ. The speech was delivered to an estimated 250,000 people who came to Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963 to march for civil rights. Link: Full Speech from the National Archives

So how much do you know about the speech and the events that led up to it? It was on this day in 1963 that Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his famous “I Have A Dream” speech as part of the March on Washington.

I have a dream speech text