Like many prolific writers and speakers, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was not always consistent in his views. There is no consensus about whether or not he recanted the views he expressed in his "I Have a Dream" speech, but it is certainly true that in the last years of his life, he made various statements in which he expressed skepticism about whether his dream could ever become reality.

Dr. King made various points that retrospectively undermined his speech. He said that the reforms America had made had been largely superficial and had been in the economic interests of the country. Ending segregation in hotels and restaurants, for example, had not cost anyone anything. To achieve genuine equality would require work and investment for which King believed the country was unprepared. King also condemned the Vietnam War, saying that this was a factor that had worked against social justice.

In an interview he gave to NBC News in 1967, Dr. King comments that his dream—a clip of which is shown at the beginning of the interview—has "at many points turned into a nightmare." This is as close as he came to a specific recantation of the ideas expressed in his "I Have a Dream" speech.