Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his powerful “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963. Sixty years later, the speech endures as a defining moment in the civil rights movement and remains a beacon in the ongoing struggle for racial equality.
This gripping book tells the story behind “The Speech” and sheds light on other key moments of the March on Washington, drawing on interviews with Clarence Jones, a close friend of and draft speechwriter for Martin Luther King Jr.; Joan Baez, who sang at the march; as well as Angela Davis and other leading civil rights luminaries.
Now with a new introduction to mark the 60th anniversary of that historic day in Washington, The Speech offers an essential analysis of King’s words at a moment of urgent reckoning and renewed calls for justice and liberation.
Gary Younge is a sociology professor at the University of Manchester. A new edition of his book Who Are We? How Identity Politics Took Over the World was published by Penguin in September.
ISBN: 9781642599602
Publication date: August 15, 2023
“Slim but powerful…. Younge is adept at both distilling the facts and asking blunt questions.” —Boston Globe
“Gary Younge's meditative retrospection on [the speech's] significance reminds us of all the micro-moments of transformation behind the scenes—the thought and preparation, vision and revision—whose currency fed that magnificent lightning bolt in history.” —Patricia J. Williams
Towards the end of his life, Martin Luther King, Jr. began to publicly articulate an anticapitalist analysis of the United States that put him in sync with rising critiques from the global revolutionary left of market-based economies.
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