…is how often he cites the founding fathers. There are his lines in the I Have a Dream Speech (1963).

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But I also see, from the Library of America’s second book of American Speeches that he does it again in the last speech of his life in Memphis (1968):

And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy, which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Now King was influenced by many people, including Jack O’Dell. And some of his founders’ talk is obvious rhetoric, used by most Americans, and useful particularly to King to counteract “constitutionalists” like Sen. Richard Russell, who argued that they weren’t in favor of racism, just states’ rights. (Robert Caro has his own ideas about Russell–see Master of the Senate). (NB–NR sided entirely with Russell, though hopefully for different motives.)

Still, it is interesting, and unless some King scholar knows otherwise, I don’t see why he wasn’t sincere.

Democracy vs. republican government, founders’ views of, is for another post.