The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream (Updated Edition)
Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his powerful "I Have a Dream" speech on August 28, 1963. Sixty years later, the speech endures as a defining moment in the civil rights movement and remains a beacon in the ongoing struggle for racial equality.
This gripping book tells the story behind "The Speech" and sheds light on other key moments of the March on Washington, drawing on interviews with Clarence Jones, a close friend of and draft speechwriter for Martin Luther King Jr.; Joan Baez, who sang at the march; as well as Angela Davis and other leading civil rights luminaries.
Now with a new introduction to mark the 60th anniversary of that historic day in Washington, The Speech offers an essential analysis of King's words at a moment of urgent reckoning and renewed calls for justice and liberation.
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Gary Younge is an award-winning author, broadcaster and a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester in England. Formerly a columnist at The Guardian he is an editorial board member of The Nation magazine and the Alfred Knobler Fellow for Type Media Center. He has written five books: Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives, The Speech: The Story Behind Martin Luther King's Dream, Who Are We?: And Should it Matter in the 21st Century, Stranger in a Strange Land: Travels in the Disunited States, and No Place Like Home: A Black Briton's Journey Through the Deep South. He has also written for The New York Review of Books, Granta, GQ, The Financial Times, and The New Statesman, and made several radio and television documentaries on subjects ranging from gay marriage to Brexit. He lives in London.
"Slim but powerful.... Younge is adept at both distilling the facts and asking blunt questions." --Boston Globe
"Gary Younge's meditative retrospection on [the speech's] significance reminds us of all the micro-moments of transformation behind the scenes--the thought and preparation, vision and revision--whose currency fed that magnificent lightning bolt in history." --Patricia J. Williams
