VIDEOS ~ Martin Luther King Gives "I Have A Dream" Speech

Alisdair and I read some more of Amy Pastan's biography, "Martin Luther King, Jr.:  A Photographic Story of a Life," this afternoon.  Part of the material in Chapter 7 - "Daring to Dream" was detailing the events of the "March on Washington" on August 28, 1963, where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech, with more than 250,000 people (both white and black) in attendance.

After we finished reading, I got out the folder with the little printouts that we need to put together for the lapbook we are making on the topic.  There was a little pocket, with a picture of MLK on the front at the podium.  The instructions suggested the student could print out some of the text of the speech itself as copywork.

I sent Alisdair to the computer to find some text so he could complete the assignment.  However, instead of finding a portion of the text, he found the entire document.  Why put a few sentences into our lapbook, when we can have the whole thing?  So, we shrunk the font down so it would fit on two pages, printed it off and I folded it up to fit in the envelope.

I was going to read the entire speech to Alisdair and then I got a better idea.  "Check You Tube for the speech," I told him.  Almost instantly Alisdair found the actual footage from the event.

It was like we had suddenly come upon a time machine and, thanks to our computer, were transported from our living room ~ back to 1963 and the crowded Mall in Washington.  Back to a time when men wore suits and hats.  And back to a time when film footage was still in black and white instead of technicolour!

Technology is, indeed, amazing!  What better way to learn than to hear Martin Luther King, Jr. HIMSELF uttering such powerful and emotional words?  Maybe, like myself, you were too young to remember the events of that hot August day (or, like Alisdair, maybe you weren't even born yet!)  Regardless, we can still witness this part of our collective history just by watching the vintage footage taken of Martin Luther King, Jr. at the podium that afternoon.