Pushkin

One late summer day in 1963, thousands upon thousands of people gathered on the mall in Washington, DC.

They had come to America's capital for jobs and freedom to show the Kennedy administration

that civil rights legislation must be pushed through Congress and to hear the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak.

The official program had been long and packed with speeches that a quarter of a million people defied the heat as they waited.

The crowd stretched back from the Lincoln Memorial, packing the sides of the famous reflecting pool, swirling around the base of the Washington monument,

and extending toward the intransigent capital itself.

The mall usually dwarfs anything on a human scale, not that afternoon.

The gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson, sang, I've been beaut and I've been scorned, anticipation was building.

All three television networks switched to live coverage. Dr. King stepped forward to speak.

To address not only the sweltering crowd, but a national audience he had never had before, then might never have again.

Dr. King had spent the night laboring on his speech with a few trusted aides weighing every word of what he would say.

For a few minutes, the nation, even the world, would be focused on those words from the Lincoln Memorial steps.

Dr. King knew that those words had to be perfect.

But now let's leave this iconic scene behind us and travel across time and across the Atlantic.

28 years later, a very different man would give a very different speech in front of a very different audience.

This man's name was Gerald Ratner and he didn't have a dream. He had a nightmare.

I'm Tim Halford and you're listening to cautionary tales.

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