AHTER 1963 03 Martin L King Jr - Address to Ci

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. Five score years ago, a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had

been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But 100 years later, the Negro steel is not free. 100 years later, the life of the Negroist steel satly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination 100 years later.

The Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty. In the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity, one hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.

So we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check when the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

They were signing a promise or a note to which every American was to fall out. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

And it is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promise or a note in so far as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.