Martin Luther King’s July 4th Speech
Martin Luther King gave a sermon on July 4, 1965 at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. His topic was “The American Dream.”
You can read his entire sermon at the Martin Luther King Papers at Stanford. In fact, you can hear it, as well, though his spoken sermon is somewhat different than the written transcript.
Here is a lengthy excerpt, though I’d encourage you to read or listen to it in its entirety:
This is why we must join the war against poverty (Yes, sir) and believe in the dignity of all work. What makes a job menial? I’m tired of this stuff about menial labor. What makes it menial is that we don’t pay folk anything. (Yes, sir) Give somebody a job and pay them some money so they can live and educate their children and buy a home and have the basic necessities of life. And no matter what the job is it takes on dignity.
I submit to you when I took off on that plane this morning, I saw men go out there in their overalls. (Yes, sir,
You can read his entire sermon at the Martin Luther King Papers at Stanford. In fact, you can hear it, as well, though his spoken sermon is somewhat different than the written transcript.
Here is a lengthy excerpt, though I’d encourage you to read or listen to it in its entirety:
This is why we must join the war against poverty (Yes, sir) and believe in the dignity of all work. What makes a job menial? I’m tired of this stuff about menial labor. What makes it menial is that we don’t pay folk anything. (Yes, sir) Give somebody a job and pay them some money so they can live and educate their children and buy a home and have the basic necessities of life. And no matter what the job is it takes on dignity.
I submit to you when I took off on that plane this morning, I saw men go out there in their overalls. (Yes, sir,
