Radicals Diminish Martin Luther King Jr.’s Message

This week marks the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and the speech about civil rights that stirred a nation’s conscience. Martin Luther King Jr. was addressing a crowd of 260,000 when gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted, “Tell ’em about the dream, Martin.” King then departed from his prepared text to make an impassioned, extemporaneous appeal.

Sadly, it seems, every year there is less recognition of King’s thrilling speech and its focus on the power of peaceful protest and on the need for unity against evil. The left seems to want to forget it, and many radicals claim that its evocation of a society that aspires to be colorblind is outdated and often used to “whitewash” King’s more radical calls for “economic justice.”

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John Fund

John Fund is National Review’s national-affairs reporter.

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Martin Luther King Jr

This week marks the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and the speech about civil rights that stirred a nation’s conscience. Martin Luther King Jr. was addressing a crowd of 260,000 when gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted, “Tell ’em about the dream, Martin.” King then departed from his prepared text to make an impassioned, extemporaneous appeal.

Sadly, it seems, every year there is less recognition of King’s thrilling speech and its focus on the power of peaceful protest and on the need for unity against evil. The left seems to want to forget it, and many radicals claim that its evocation of a society that aspires to be colorblind is outdated and often used to “whitewash” King’s more radical calls for “economic justice.”