I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration

for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed

the emancipation proclamation.

This momentous decree came as a bread beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves

who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.

It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles

of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of

the vast ocean of material prosperity.

One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society

and finds himself an exile in his own land.

So we've come here today to dramatize the shameful condition.

And since we've come to our nation, capital to cash a check when the architects of our

republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

They were signing a promise or a note, whichever the American was to fall out.

This note was a promise at all, man.

Yes, black men as well as white men would be guaranteed the unanniable rights of life

liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promise or a note in so far as her

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