"I have a dream". I have a dream. Those four words, of which we all know the history and recognize the epochal importance, were pronounced exactly 56 years ago, on August 28, 1963 in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, at the end of a protest march for civil rights known like the march on Washington for jobs and freedom. Those words were the title of Martin Luther King jr's speech, one of the most famous of the twentieth century and become a symbol of the fight against racism in the United States. Martin Luther King, who died less than five years after that episode, was one of the key post-war figures in the West: a Protestant pastor, politician and above all an activist, engaged in the fight for the recognition of the rights of blacks, minorities and the marginalized .
His "dream" was precisely that of a free, democratic, egalitarian American society, free from prejudices against the population of African origin: in the historic Washington speech, which together with all his intense activity of "peaceful resistance" earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, Luther King repeats the phrase "I have a dream" eight times, to enhance the image of a unified America in the name of integration; but to be repeated over and over again there are also "now is the time" (with which he urges Americans to act), "some of you have come", "come back", "we can", "free at last", "what let freedom ring", "we can never be satisfied".
“I have a dream – recites one of the most remembered passages – that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!”. “I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but for what their person contains. I have a dream today!”.
Martin Luther King's pacifist activity and especially the time of Washington's speech have fallen during the short but influential presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, with which MLK had a controversial relationship: although the Democratic president had promised a commitment to the recognition of civil rights (including the right to vote) for African Americans, there was no time to implement the path during his term. Kennedy was in fact assassinated in Dallas, as is well known, on November 22 of that same year, the fateful 1963. Those were the years of the Cold War and 68 would soon take place in Europe.
But America was still experiencing the season of racism, partly overcome thanks to the activity not only of Martin Luther King but also of Malcolm X and, even earlier, of Rosa Parks, protagonist already in 1955 of the episode of the bus to Montgomery. On December 1 of that year, the African American woman had refused to leave her seat, still one of those in the middle, made available to everyone, to seat a white man: for this reason she was arrested and accused of violating segregation laws.
