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Little-known facts about Martin Luther King's ‘I Have a Dream’ speech

Researchers at N.C. State University unveiled for the first time publicly the precursor to that famous speech.
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Aug 28, 2018

One of the greatest speeches in history was not going so well.

Explore RELATED: WATCH: Unveiling of new Martin Luther King Jr. Statue:

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood before 250,000 people on the National Mall in Washington 54 years ago today. He spoke from a prepared text. He was nervous. The speech wasn’t flat. It just wasn’t great.

Perhaps sensing that he wasn’t reaching the throngs before him, King paused. He set aside his text and reached for words that he hoped would galvanize a nation.

ExploreRELATED: Aug. 28, the date of King’s statue dedication, has poignant meaning in Civil Rights history

Two things about the extraordinary oratory that came next are not widely known. For one, the “I Have a Dream” speech was not in King’s text that day. For another, King had uttered those words in an earlier speech, in a small town, 10 months before, and he had a notion of their power.

Read more about  the “I Have a Dream” speech here and meet some of the people whose lives it touched more than a half-century ago.

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ExplorePhotos: Statues of MLK around the nation (and beyond)

About the Author

Ernie Suggs is an enterprise reporter covering race and culture for the AJC since 1997. A 1990 graduate of N.C. Central University and a 2009 Harvard University Nieman Fellow, he is also the former vice president of the National Association of Black Journalists. His obsession with Prince, Spike Lee movies, Hamilton and the New York Yankees is odd.

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