I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Monday, January 17th. On this Martin Luther King Day, let's begin with two historical soundbites and one from this weekend with a little bit of context.

1963 was the year that Dr. King gave his famous I Have a Dream speech.

That was at the big March on Washington in August of that year, an important moment, obviously,

that helped in the progress toward the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

It was a few months yet before President Kennedy would be assassinated,

and the pressure was really being placed on him to get more active about civil rights legislation

as well as on Congress.

Dr. King's line about judging people by the content of their character

has been widely quoted, over-quoted, and even distorted to mean color shouldn't be taken

into account when addressing racial injustice. His belief in nonviolence has been widely

reduced to exclude the fact that he was carrying out forceful

nonviolent acts of civil disobedience because he was a nonviolent change agent, not just a passive

asker. So for many people, the text and speech that deserves at least as much historical spotlight as I have a dream was the one

from just a few months earlier in the spring of 63 when King was in jail in Birmingham, Alabama,

for leading nonviolent civil disobedience there. Here is Dr. King reading from his letter from a Birmingham jail

citing a particularly painful moment that a southern parent might have faced.

When you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to

explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the

public amusement park that has just been advertised on television. King's words from 1963 before I

have a dream. It's a lesson because from today's perspective, it seems obvious to most Americans that an amusement park or any other private business should not legally be able to ban people on the basis of their race, right?

But here's another historical clip from back then of South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond opposing civil rights legislation.

This is from the same year, 1963, in a debate with Senator Hubert Humphrey on CBS television.

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