“I have a dream. With that one sentence, Martin Luther King touched and empowered an entire nation. You know what else he did? He made everybody else without a dream feel real bad.”
–Christopher Titus
Martin Luther King, an activist born in America, became the most prominent spokesperson of the Civil Rights Movement. While for whatever movements King was famous for, yet the most prominent remains the speech he delivered in 1963 on the ’March on Washington’, remains to be a moment marked in history. His speech talked about civil rights and Negro rights with references from the Bible and the American Constitution as inspired by John. F. Kennedy, however to this day what is still remembered about his addressing was the line, ‘I have a dream’.
However, even though the rest of the speech was improvised a lot of times and written by Martin himself and later printed off to be given to the press yet the most remarkable line came to him on stage during the speech. While he was standing and giving his speech, Mahalia Jackson, a singer who performed hymns before him on stage shouted at him to mention the ‘I have a dream’ part, which was not part of Martin’s original address. It was originally Martin’s own idea which he disregarded to make part of the speech, and if Mahalia hadn’t shouted at him, this line would’ve never even existed and as much as it is regarded to this day, would have never even happened. It was only a matter of Mahalia’s reminder, that Martin began vocalizing whatever he wanted to and left his reluctance behind.
What Martin faced was what most of us face too, sometimes we deem something unsuitable in contemplation, which mainly prospers through self-doubt and hesitation, but deep inside we do know what matters and most of the times it is right there, on the tips of our tongues, just waiting to be said.