Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963, in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. He begins with a remembrance of the Emancipation Proclamation but then notes that “one hundred years later, the Negro is still not free.” Black Americans are “still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination” and by poverty. He then speaks about claiming the “freedom and equality” promised by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and about the goals of the civil rights movement.

Then King proclaims,

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

He goes on to repeat “I have a dream” eight more times. King has a dream that the nation will someday live out the words of the Declaration of Independence. He dreams that descendants of slaves and descendants of slave owners will come together in brotherhood and that Mississippi will “be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.” In the future King dreams of, his four children will live in a nation that will not judge them by their race but by their character, and all children, no matter what their race, will be able to live as brothers and sisters. King’s dream is biblical, promising that God’s glory will be revealed and that all people “shall see it together.”

Why does King repeat the words “I have a dream” so often? His words emphasize the dreams of freedom and justice for Black people throughout the country. They drive home his main point of freedom with a tone of hope and expectation while exciting his audience and urging them to persevere. Indeed, King’s words are both beautiful and effective, and his speech has been and will continue to be remembered as a beacon of hope.