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Martin Luther King: ‘I Have a Dream’ speech

NASHVILLE PRIDE — A young Baptist minister, Martin Luther King, Jr. rose to prominence in the 1950s as a spiritual leader of the burgeoning civil rights movement and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SLCC).

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The “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr. before a crowd of some 250,000 people at the 1963 March on Washington, remains one of the most famous speeches in history. Weaving in references to the country’s Founding Fathers and the Bible, King used universal themes to depict the struggles of African Americans, before closing with an improvised riff on his dreams of equality. The eloquent speech was immediately recognized as a highlight of the successful protest, and has endured as one of the signature moments of the civil rights movement.

A young Baptist minister, Martin Luther King, Jr. rose to prominence in the 1950s as a spiritual leader of the burgeoning civil rights movement and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SLCC).

By the early 1960s, African Americans had seen gains made through organized campaigns that placed its participants in harm’s way but also garnered attention for their plight. One such campaign, the 1961 Freedom Rides, resulted in vicious beatings for many participants, but resulted in the Interstate Commerce Commission ruling that ended the practice of segregation on buses and in stations.

Similarly, the Birmingham Campaign of 1963, designed to challenge the Alabama city’s segregationist policies, produced the searing images of demonstrators being beaten, attacked by dogs and blasted with high-powered water hoses.Around the time he wrote his famed “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King decided to move forward with the idea for another event that coordinated with Negro American Labor Council (NACL) founder A. Philip Randolph’s plans for a job rights march.

Thanks to the efforts of veteran organizer Bayard Rustin, the logistics of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom came together by the summer of 1963.

Joining Randolph and King were the fellow heads of the “Big Six” civil rights organizations: Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Whitney Young of the National Urban League (NUL), James Farmer of the Congress On Racial Equality (CORE) and John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Other influential leaders also came aboard, including Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and Joachim Prinz of the American Jewish Congress (AJC).

Scheduled for August 28, the event was to consist of a mile-long march from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, in honor of the president who had signed the Emancipation Proclamation a century earlier, and would feature a series of prominent speakers.

Its stated goals included demands for desegregated public accommodations and public schools, redress of violations of constitutional rights and an expansive federal works program to train employees.

In preparation for his turn at the event, King solicited contributions from colleagues and incorporated successful elements from previous speeches. Although his “I have a dream” segment did not appear in his written text, it had been used to great effect before, most recently during a June 1963 speech to 150,000 supporters in Detroit.

Unlike his fellow speakers in Washington, King didn’t have the text ready for advance distribution by August 27. He didn’t even sit down to write the speech until after arriving his hotel room later that evening, finishing up a draft after midnight.

The March on Washington produced a bigger turnout than expected, as an estimated 250,000 people arrived to participate in what was then the largest gathering for an event in the history of the nation’s capital.

Along with notable speeches by Randolph and Lewis, the audience was treated to performances by folk luminaries Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and gospel favorite Mahalia Jackson.

Toward the end, with television cameras beaming his image to a national audience, King began his speech slowly but soon showed his gift for weaving recognizable references to the Bible, the U.S. Constitution and other universal themes into his oratory.

Pointing out how the country’s founders had signed a “promissory note” that offered great freedom and opportunity, he noted that “Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’”

At times warning of the potential for revolt, King nevertheless maintained a positive, uplifting tone, imploring the audience to “go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.”

Around the halfway point of the speech, Mahalia Jackson implored him to “Tell ’em about the ‘Dream,’ Martin.” Whether or not King consciously heard, he soon moved away from his prepared text.

Repeating the mantra, “I have a dream,” he offered up hope that “my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” and the desire to “transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”

“And when this happens,” he bellowed in his closing remarks, “and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’”

King’s stirring speech was immediately singled out as the highlight of the successful march.

James Reston of The New York Times wrote that the “pilgrimage was merely a great spectacle” until King’s turn, and James Baldwin later described the impact of King’s words as making it seem that “we stood on a height, and could see our inheritance; perhaps we could make the kingdom real.”

Just three weeks after the march, King returned to the difficult realities of the struggle by eulogizing three of the girls killed in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

Still, his televised triumph at the feet of Lincoln brought favorable exposure to his movement, and eventually helped secure the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. The following year, after the violent Selma to Montgomery march in Alabama, African Americans secured another victory with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Over the final years of his life, King continued to spearhead campaigns for change even as he faced challenges by increasingly radical factions of the movement he helped popularize. Shortly after visiting Memphis, Tennessee, in support of striking sanitation workers, and just hours after delivering another celebrated speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” King was assassinated by shooter James Earl Ray on the balcony of his hotel room on April 4, 1968.

Remembered for its powerful imagery and its repetition of a simple and memorable phrase, King’s “I Have a Dream” speech has endured as a signature moment of the civil rights struggle, and a crowning achievement of one of the movement’s most famous faces.

The Library of Congress added the speech to the National Recording Registry in 2002, and the following year the National Park Service dedicated an inscribed marble slab to mark the spot where King stood that day.
In 2016, Time included the speech as one of its 10 greatest orations in history.

This article originally appeared in the Nashville Pride Group.

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UPDATE: PepsiCo Meets with Sharpton Over DEI Rollbacks, Future Action Pending

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — The more than hour-long meeting included PepsiCo Chairman Ramon Laguarta and Steven Williams, CEO of PepsiCo North America, and was held within the 21-day window Sharpton had given the company to respond.

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By Stacy M. Brown
BlackPressUSA.com Senior National Correspondent

Rev. Al Sharpton met Tuesday morning with PepsiCo leadership at the company’s global headquarters in Purchase, New York, following sharp criticism of the food and beverage giant’s decision to scale back nearly $500 million in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The more than hour-long meeting included PepsiCo Chairman Ramon Laguarta and Steven Williams, CEO of PepsiCo North America, and was held within the 21-day window Sharpton had given the company to respond. Sharpton was joined by members of the National Action Network (NAN), the civil rights organization he founded and leads. “It was a constructive conversation,” Sharpton said after the meeting. “We agreed to follow up meetings within the next few days. After that continued dialogue, NAN Chairman Dr. W. Franklyn Richardson and I, both former members of the company’s African American Advisory Board, will make a final determination and recommendation to the organization on what we will do around PepsiCo moving forward, as we continue to deal with a broader swath of corporations with whom we will either boycott or buy-cott.”

Sharpton initially raised concerns in an April 4 letter to Laguarta, accusing the company of abandoning its equity commitments and threatening a boycott if PepsiCo did not meet within three weeks. PepsiCo announced in February that it would no longer maintain specific goals for minority representation in its management or among its suppliers — a move that drew criticism from civil rights advocates. “You have walked away from equity,” Sharpton wrote at the time, pointing to the dismantling of hiring goals and community partnerships as clear signs that “political pressure has outweighed principle.” PepsiCo did not issue a statement following Tuesday’s meeting. The company joins a growing list of major corporations — including Walmart and Target — that have scaled back internal DEI efforts since President Donald Trump returned to office. Trump has eliminated DEI programs from the federal government and warned public schools to do the same or risk losing federal funding. Sharpton has vowed to hold companies accountable. In January, he led a “buy-cott” at Costco to applaud the retailer’s ongoing DEI efforts and announced that NAN would identify two corporations to boycott within 90 days if they failed to uphold equity commitments. “That is the only viable tool that I see at this time, which is why we’ve rewarded those that stood with us,” Sharpton said.

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Target Reels from Boycotts, Employee Revolt, and Massive Losses as Activists Plot Next Moves

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Target is spiraling as consumer boycotts intensify, workers push to unionize, and the company faces mounting financial losses following its rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

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By Stacy M. Brown
BlackPressUSA.com Senior National Correspondent

Target is spiraling as consumer boycotts intensify, workers push to unionize, and the company faces mounting financial losses following its rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. With foot traffic plummeting, stock prices at a five-year low, and employee discontent boiling over, national civil rights leaders and grassroots organizers are vowing to escalate pressure in the weeks ahead. Led by Georgia pastor Rev. Jamal Bryant, a 40-day “Targetfast” aligned with the Lenten season continues to gain traction. “This is about holding companies accountable for abandoning progress,” Bryant said, as the campaign encourages consumers to shop elsewhere. Groups like the NAACP, the National Newspaper Publishers Association, and The People’s Union USA are amplifying the effort, organizing mass boycotts and strategic buying initiatives to target what they call corporate surrender to bigotry.

Meanwhile, Target’s workforce is in an open revolt. On Reddit, self-identified employees described mass resignations, frustration with meager pay raises, and growing calls to unionize. “We’ve had six people give their two-week notices,” one worker wrote. “A rogue team member gathered us in the back room and started talking about forming a union.” Others echoed the sentiment, with users posting messages like, “We’ve been talking about forming a union at my store too,” and “Good on them for trying to organize—it needs to happen.” Target’s problems aren’t just anecdotal. The numbers reflect a company in crisis. The retail giant has logged 10 straight weeks of falling in-store traffic. In February, foot traffic dropped 9% year-over-year, including a 9.5% plunge on February 28 during the 24-hour “economic blackout” boycott organized by The People’s Union USA. March saw a 6.5% decline compared to the previous year. Operating income fell 21% in the most recent quarter, and the company’s stock (TGT) opened at just $94 on April 14, down from $142 in January before the DEI cuts and subsequent backlash. The economic backlash is growing louder online, too.

“We are still boycotting Target due to them bending to bigotry by eroding their DEI programs,” posted the activist group We Are Somebody on April 14. “Target stock has gone down, and their projections remain flat. DEI was good for business. Do the right thing.” Former congresswoman Nina Turner, a senior fellow at The New School’s Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy, wrote, “Boycotts are effective. Boycotts must have a demand. We will continue to boycott until our demands are met.” More action is on the horizon. Another Target boycott is scheduled for June 3–9, part of a broader campaign targeting corporations that have abandoned DEI initiatives under pressure from right-wing politics and recent executive orders by President Donald Trump. The People’s Union USA, which led the February 28 boycott, has already launched similar weeklong actions against Walmart and announced upcoming boycotts of Amazon (May 6–12), Walmart again (May 20–26), and McDonald’s (June 24–30). The organization’s founder, John Schwarz, said the goal is nothing short of shifting the economic power balance.

“We are going to remind them who has the power,” Schwarz said. “For one day, we turn it off. For one day, we shut it down. For one day, we remind them that this country does not belong to the elite, it belongs to the people.” As for Target, its top executives continue to downplay the damage. During a recent earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Jim Lee described the outlook for 2025 as uncertain, citing the “ripple” effects of tariffs and a wide range of possible outcomes. “We’re going to be focusing on controlling what we can control,” Lee said. But discontent is spreading internally. A Reddit post from a worker claimed, “The HR rep is doing his best to stop the bleeding, but all he did was put a Bluey band-aid on what is essentially a severed limb.”

Several employees criticized the company’s internal rewards system, “Bullseye Bucks,” for offering what amounts to play money. “Can’t pay rent or buy food with Bullseye Bucks,” one wrote. Others urged their colleagues to join unionizing efforts. “Imagine how much Target would lose their mind if they were under a union contract,” one team leader wrote. “It needs to happen at this point.” One former manager said they left the company after an insulting raise. “Quit last year when they gave me a 28-cent raise. Best decision I’ve ever made.” From store floors to boardrooms, the pressure is growing on Target. And as calls for justice, equity, and worker rights get louder, one worker put it plainly: “We’re all screwed—unless we fight back.”

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Confederates Whistle Dixie Tunes and Black MAGA Applauds

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — They include Black MAGA supporters who’ve chosen silence—even solidarity—as racism escalates from campaign rhetoric to federal policy.

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By Stacy M. Brown
BlackPressUSA.com Senior National Correspondent

In Donald Trump’s second term, the faces of compliance are no longer just white. They include Black MAGA supporters who’ve chosen silence—even solidarity—as racism escalates from campaign rhetoric to federal policy. When Trump returned to the White House, he did so with a platform not just soaked in bigotry but engineered to roll back civil rights and diversity efforts on every front. And while his white base cheered, many of his Black allies—those donning MAGA hats and taking up seats on the frontlines of his rallies—chose loyalty over principle, muting themselves as a wave of white nationalist policymaking targets their communities.

Their silence began long before Inauguration Day. During the 2024 campaign, Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally drew fire after a comedian on the lineup referred to Puerto Rico as “garbage.” But that wasn’t the only racist moment. As Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, one of Trump’s most visible Black surrogates, walked onto the stage, the campaign blasted “Dixie”—a song revered by the Confederacy and white nationalists. Donalds said nothing. And neither did the rest of Black MAGA. That same silence echoed in Springfield, Ohio, when Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, spread a false and racist claim that Haitian immigrants were “eating cats and dogs.” The fabrication was met with horror from civil rights advocates and journalists. But Trump’s Black supporters? Not a word.

Black MAGA loyalists, many of whom cite values, religion, and personal ambition as their rationale, have essentially normalized the very racism that their grandparents fought to dismantle. Pew Research shows that while only 4% of Black Americans identify as Republicans, those who do often express a belief that the GOP better represents their values—even as those values are trampled by the very administration they support. One study published in Sociological Inquiry found that Black Republicans often “reframe racism in a way that makes their alignment with white conservatives more palatable,” even when it involves rationalizing policies that harm Black communities. And harm is precisely what Trump’s policies are doing. Since taking office, Trump has issued a barrage of executive orders aimed at eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across the federal government. Agencies that serve minority communities have faced massive defunding, DEI offices have been shuttered, and civil rights enforcement has all but disappeared. As noted in The Hill, the goal is not just the destruction of policy—it’s the erasure of progress itself.

“Every act of Trump’s second term has been a white-nationalist signal,” wrote one analyst in The American Prospect, calling MAGA an “identity movement” that champions white grievance over democratic principle. There is little space for Blackness, except as a prop. And yet, some Black Trump supporters defend the administration with defiance. One such supporter, who canvassed for Trump in 2024, told The Independent he was called the N-word by fellow conservatives. Rather than walking away, he doubled down on his allegiance. The consequences of this allegiance are becoming deadly clear. As TIME reported, nearly 20% of Trump supporters said freeing the slaves was a mistake. According to The Washington Post, support for Trump has long been fueled more by racial resentment than economic concerns, and that resentment has now translated into policy.

A report from Press Watch concluded that Trump’s base continues to be driven by a desire to protect white dominance and suppress nonwhite progress, particularly through culture war battles over schools, immigration, and federal hiring. Even academic journals have noted that wearing a MAGA hat has become “a proxy for racialized identity”—an affirmation of white supremacy, no matter who’s wearing it. Meanwhile, The Conversation documented how MAGA’s rise has coincided with increased armed intimidation at polling places, violent rhetoric against journalists, and calls to monitor so-called “urban” neighborhoods—all with Trump’s encouragement. The Black MAGA base has not only failed to object—they’ve offered Trump moral cover. Whether out of personal ambition, political opportunity, or delusion, they’ve made peace with racists, while the administration they uphold works tirelessly to erase the freedoms won through generations of Black struggle. As The American Prospect put it: “Trump’s MAGA identity is a movement rooted in white identity politics. That some Black Americans have chosen to stand inside of it doesn’t make it less racist—it makes it more dangerous”

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