during the same things that they were to grow the product. that bourbon industry caught on to that as senate creating products such as single barrel, a small batch, extra age to that could be treated the same way. those products grew in the early 90's. they were starting to bring up the sales of the other products. al, this is great. i wonder what some of their other products is like. so, now those actually growing and a pretty good rate, even in this modern economy. the bourbon industry is actually attending. >> mike veach on the social history of bourbon. for more information on this and other interviews from frankfort, kentucky, visit c-span.org / local content. ..

>> when do a great person's words as psychologist robert coles suggest become a turning point. in the dream martin luther king and the speech that inspired a nation, he looks at the impact on the civil rights movement and the profound effect that it has had on america's collective unconscious. why of the thousands speeches that king delivered in his lifetime that this one lives on? this was a question that drew hanson set out to answer. as gary wills did in gettysburg, he looks at political sources that converged to make this one

speech so monumental in impact. drew hanson began to write the dream as a student at yale law school. he is a graduate of harvard and studied theology as a road scholar. a week -- rode scholar, august 28th, america will commemorate the fourth anniversary of the march on washington the day that king delivered his great speech. the los angeles public library is very honored to present drew hansen discussing the "the dream: martin luther king, jr., and the speech that inspired a nation." please welcome drew hansen. [applause] >> well, hi, everyone. thanks for coming here. and thanks to louise and to the library foundation and the library for setting this up. this is a real thrill for me to be able to do this. and i'm very grateful to louise and to the rest of the library

folks for making this possible. i thought before i started tonight, i'd talk to you all how the book came to be since the first thing anyone asks when we get to question time so we'll save a few minutes there. i started working on this book when i was in law school. i had course on the civil rights movement and the course of the memories and the impressions people like me had about the civil rights movement and i'm 30. i was born after most of the movement's grateful victories were won. the only thing i knew about the civil rights movement was "i have a dream" and i thought well, that doesn't make a lot of sense. i mean, why that speech instead of any of the other speeches king gave during the movement or for that matter, why a speech at all. why don't people of our generation remember some of the more arresting images of the movement, scenes from the protests of the birmingham.

the montgomery bus boycott and the chicago and i realized what an amazing accomplishment the speech was and i wanted to write something that would pay homage to what king had done both as a preacher as we all know, as a field subsequently and as a prophet and i guess there's a personal angle to this and my dad is a lawyer and a professor both profession that is require a fair amount of public speaking and i thought about the elements of a speech that make them successful and i as a mom as a minister grew up in a very religious household and one of the things that struck me working on this book was how deeply king's personal faith was and it may seem kind of obvious, of course, avenues minister and he has faith for king what struck me was how he saw his entire career something he had been definely called to do such

that it wasn't just martin luther king leading a march in birmingham and montgomery that god told him to do it. and with all of king's speeches particularly with "i have a dream" i think king add very clear sense that it wasn't just his words or something that he felt that he was communicating to the nation but that it was god's work and god's plan for the country and so those were the kind of combination of factors that got me interested in the subject and got me three years on the book. i'll read from the prologue and the first chapter of my book which is about "i have a dream" but also about the march on washington. and a little bit of background on the "march on washington" because what i'm going to read won't make a lot of sense unless you know something about the event. the march on washington something we think about as martin luther king's event began as an event by a fellow named phil randolph who is not a name

that is much remembered of the litany of heroes which is a real omission because he was one of the great heroes of the movement going back to the 1940s and philip randolph add lifelong dream of a mass civil rights demonstration in the nation's capital. he had been working on plans for it since 1940s. and in late 1962, mr. randolph started planning for an emancipation march for jobs that he would hold in washington, d.c., in october of the following year. and he contacted the leaders of the major civil rights groups about the initiative. and it pretty much fell flat. no one terribly wanted to get involved. king was supportive of the idea but he and his organization -- the southern christian leadership conference was busy preparing for a major campaign in birmingham the next thing so he didn't have a whole lot of time to spend on another large initiative and so the idea just kind of sat there until after

the birmingham campaign and as i'm sure most of know something about birmingham which was the real turning point in the civil rights movement struggle against southern segregation. and after birmingham king and his aides had a conference call where they talked about wheelchair next move would be and we know exactly what they said on that call because it was wiretapped by the fbi, which is one of the, you know, horrible ironies doing work in this period is some of the best evidence you thought comes from these fbi wiretaps may be another way to get them but there it is. so king's aides said here's what we'll do. we'll do birmingham again and again and again all throughout -- in cities all throughout the south. and king lets them go on and then he interrupts and he says we're at this critical moment with the national feeling that time is running out. the time has come that we should just gather thousands and thousands of people and go to

washington, d.c., and just stay there. and, of course, king knew as his aide's knew as philip randolph's jumped on board as soon as as randolph and king were there and all the other civil rights leaders were on line because nobody wanted to be left out and this is june of 1963 at that time. and the leaders decided that they'd hold the march in late august giving them a grand total of eight weeks to plan the largest civil rights demonstration in america's history. so philip randolph deputized a man whom you'll see in the book to run logistics for the day and he was someone who was a long time aide to philip randolph in labor and civil rights causes and also someone who had some long familiarity with king during the montgomery bus boycott randolph went down montgomery and helped king do errands and do typing and be an extra pair of hands to help out and so you put together a small staff and started putting together the plans for getting 250,000 people to the nation's

capital. >> and we'll pick up in the first chapter of my book with the reaction of most of the political establishment in washington to the prospects of the march. most white politicians in washington had been nervous about the march for months. in may, senator john of mississippi apologized for his colleagues for scary stories for a possible demonstration in the nation's capital. the prospect of black americans can go washington to present their grievances terrified most white politicians who envisioned their black constituentsing marching down constitution avenue throwing stones all of them. two days before the march, representative william jennings brian dorhen of south carolina warned the demonstration might eventually lead to the overthrow of american government. mr. speaker, government of the

french congo was overthrown last week by a howling mob in the streets of its capital county and there were incredible tales of violent demonstrations and it will set a dangerous precedent it's recommendesent of the mussolini black shirt march on rome in 1922. it is reminiscent of nuremberg. now, this is the real extreme reaction to the march. the kennedy administration's reaction to the march was trickier. he tried to get did leaders to call it off because he had a civil rights bill in congress and thought a mass demonstration would hurt rather than help the chances of the bill. and when it became clear that there was no way that a national administration no matter how powerful was going to stop the march on washington he put together a team of lawyers from the department of justice to make sure that the march planners the someone to talk to in the administration about

security arrangements, about logistics and about really what they needed and it turns out the teamed got a little bit more involved than they thought they would. many years later it came out that the department of justice secretly paid the bill for the toilets that were rented for the march that day. [laughter] >> which i'm sure they didn't envision they were getting into it. so i'll pick up -- for those who are following on page 31 for something the kennedy administration was especially worried about. the administration was particularly concerned with the security of the public address system during the afternoon program at the lincoln memorial. several department of justice attorneys feared that someone either one of the scheduled speakers or an insurgent group would use the public address system to incite the crowd to riot. john reilly the deputy attorney general in charge of the u.s. attorneys and members of the kennedy administration team decided to establish a cutoff switch so that he could shut off the speakers if it looked as though a riot was about to

begin. there was a line of sight to the podium. after the cutoff switch was put in place reilly realized he did not know what he would do next if he had to cut the sound. he went out and bought a record of mahalia jackson singing distal he's got the whole world in his hands" if something went awry, he would put mahalia jackson on the turntable and i spoke to him where he found the record that he was going to play it was still shrinked wrapped in plastic and he had vision had of washington burning off as he was scrambling to get the plastic off. on wednesday, august 28th, 1963, washington, d.c., had barricaded itself against the invaders. the streets downtown were nearly deserted. many stores were closed and chain-locked. at the justice department's request the decrease's commissioner banned alcohol sales in the district. malcolm x who was in the washington for the event told some friends on tuesday night, no fire water for the indians tomorrow. many whites who worked in washington had stayed in their

homes in maryland or virginia. several members much congress warned their female aides to stay home because the streets, they said, would not be safe. early on wednesday morning, while it was still dark, the first bus loads of marchers arrived in a city prepared for siege. a bus carrying 38 students from clarksdale and greenwood, mississippi was the first to appear. the students got off the bus and started singing. then a bus from little rock, arkansas showed up with 36 marchers on board. lines of shuttle buses stood at the curb to transport passengers by train. there were we'll have more police officers than demonstrators on the washington monument at half past morning. only six buzzeds had passed on the ellipse and few gatherers gathered at the monument. they started to warrior that it was going to flop. mr. rustin, it's past 6:00 said

one of them you promised a march of near the 100,000. where are all the people? rustin looked carefully at a yellow pad on his hand. gentlemen, everything is going exactly as planned. standing beside him one of his deputies noticed the pad he was looking at was blank. from a suite at the willard hotel martin luther king, jr., looked down at the mostly empty lawn. he got gotten to washington the night before and he spent the five days before in new york working on a speech and book manuscript in atlanta checking on fundraisering and in washington, d.c., to be on "meet the press." and when he checked into the willard hotel on the night before the march, he had nothing remotely approaching a draft of what he would end up saying the next day. he previously worried about a violent demonstration on the march, he said if that happened everything we did in birmingham would be wiped out on a single day. on the morning of the march king was nervous that so few people

would show up that the event would be a flour. coretta scott woke up to the sound of typewriters outside of her room. early television reports said that only a small number of people had assembled. king and his wife departed for the march subsued to what appeared to be a disappointing turnout. 25,000 the television reporters said as the kings left the hotel. and despite this early morning count, the true number ended up being closer to 250,000. the crowd started flooding in at about midmorning. and by midafternoon when the buses were still coming in, the decrease police called the crowd count at 210,000 but plausibly talk of late arrivals would push the number a little higher. there was a short program at the washington monument before the lawn -- well, before the planned march to the lincoln memorial and then the official program at the lincoln memorial and then we'll pick up at the washington monument. peter, paul and mary sang and

the student korbnating community that grew out of the sit-ins came on. miscellaneous dignitaries and remembered socialists. the first black attend january and jackie robinson were announced. and we're trying to locate ms. lena horne. governor ross barnett of mississippi was also listed among the missing prompting boos in the crowd changed to crowd saying he was lost beneath the speakers platform beneath the lincoln memorial. the amplifier introduced teen idol bobby darren and he said he was proud and choked up. a few members of the crowd started walking to the lincoln memorial. they were quickly followed and soon thousands of demonstrators were walking down constitution and independence avenues. they didn't form regular lines or keep a set tempo. they just walked as "the washington post" put it like people who know where they're going but not making a show of it. about 20 minutes after the people had started walking, a voice came over the loud speakers we've lost the leaders

delegation. they're hereby instructed to go to the lincoln memorial. would they please sound off? the original plan was for the heads of the major civil rights groups to emerge from morning members meeting with members of the congress and to lead them to the lincoln memorial. but when the first demonstrators started to walk the leaders were still in the meetings. they came out to find tens of thousands of people walking purposefully ahead of them. my god they're going shouted rustin whose carefully planned marching and we're supposed to leading them. as marshals tried to close the line down the leaders got to the front and a break opened up and the leaders clasped hands sing "question shall overcome" but most of the crowd was far ahead of them. from where the leaders walked they couldn't even see the first marchers and if you look carefully at the famous photos of the civil rights leaders clasping hands you can see quite clearly, you know, you elbows and wrists of people right around where the photographers are because they just randomly

opened up a break to look like they're leading everyone and they get their way to the lincoln memorial where the formal program with more entertainment and then, of course, the speeches of the day follows. at some point during the afternoon, the official speeches by the leaders of the group sponsoring the march began at the lincoln memorial. most of the speeches were not unusually moving. and even those members of the crowd with the best views started to get restless. many marchers have been up all night and retreated under the trees for a nap as the speakers drone on. because people were packed so closely together near the front even the moderate heat became difficult to deal with. many people stopped paying attention all together and started to walk back to the buses. then randolph stepped to the microphone and introduced brother john lewis. this caused many in the crowd especially those from states in the deep south to stop fidgeting and pay attention. john lewis was a 23-year-old leader of snicc who spent the last few years working on southern states on voter and desegregation campaigns.

the crowd greeted him with sustained cheers as he walked to the podium with his head stopped. i should stop for a minute one of the great joys of this experience was meeting john lewis, of course, congressman john lewis and talking to him about that day and about his speech. there's a fairly well-known story about how he revised his speech the day of the march under pressure from an archbishop of the catholic church and he'd spoken about that a number of times but i don't know that he had spoken about how he felt to be up in front with a quarter million people with martin luther king with this speech and here's what he told me about what his reaction was. john lewis didn't even acknowledge rustin as he clasped his hand and patted his back. lewis glanced down at his text and licked his lips a few times. he looked out and saw the crowd and thought to himself, my, he saw a small group of his friends from snicc clapping and here it

is, he thought and began a speech thick with the rural accent of the alabama farm he grew up a pace he thought might have been too quick. we marched today for jobs and freedom but we have nothing to be freedom for hundreds of thousands of our brothers are not here. they're receiving starvation wages or no wages at all. while we stand here there are sharecroppers in the delta of mississippi who are out in the fields working for less than $3 a day 12 hours a day. we come here today with the great sense of misgiving. right away it was clear to the crowd that john lewis did not sound like any of the other speakers they had heard. it is true that we support the administration's civil rights bill. we support it with great reservation, however. unless title 3 is put in this bill, they will have to deal with fire hoses while dealing with demonstrations and title 3 would be legislation that would give the federal government to stop the beatings of civil rights protesters as they were

exercising their constitutionally protected rights. the crowd interrupted john lewis for the plenty of time with applause as he saw the crowd's reaction he became sure of himself. in his present form this bill will not protect the citizens of danville, virginia, who must live in a constant fear of a police state or protect the hundreds of thousands of people who are arrested on trumped charges. as it stands now, the voting section of this bill will not help the thousands of black people who want to vote. it will not help the citizens of mississippi, of alabama and georgia who are qualified to vote but lack a sixth grade education. one man one vote is the african cry. it is ours too, it must be ours. it crowd clapped and whistled in approval. we must have legislation that will protect the mississippi sharecropper who is put off his farm because he dares to register to vote. we need a bill that will help the homeless and starving people. we are in a serious revolution. american politics is dominated by politics with immoral

compromises and ally chemicals political, economic and social exploitation. the crowd shouted its agreement. there are exception, of course, we salute those but what political leader can stand up and say my party is the party of principles? for the party of kennedy is also the party of eastland. and that's james eastland the long time sessiongrationist and the jonbenetob javits from new york is also the party of goldwater and you know who goldwater is. the audience punctuated the deanyone el deanyone el deanyone else -- said where's our party. and who will make it necessary to march in the streets of birmingham? where's the political party that will protect the citizens of albany, georgia? do you know in albany, georgia nine of our leaders have been indicted not by dixiecrats but by the federal government. what did the federal government when deputy sheriff beat cb kane and left him for debt or when

they assaulted the pregnant wife of slater kane and she lost her baby and the crowd joined in to give john lewis of his speech so far. he's shouting a defiant jeremiah proclaimed of the millions at the memorial and the thousands watching on tv. we cannot be patient we do not want our freedom gradually but we want to be free now. we're tired. we're tired of being beaten by policemen. we are tired of seeing our people locked up in jail over and over again and then you holler be patient. we want our freedom and we want it now and he had to pause as the crowd screamed its answer. we do not want to go to jail but we will go to jail. st this the price we must pay for love, brotherhood and true peace. i appeal to all of you to get in this great revolution. get in every village and hamlet in this station until true freedoms on and until the revolution of 1776 is complete for in the delta of mississippi in southwest georgia in the

black belt of alabama, hummer, detroit and philadelphia all over the nation they are ready for jobs and freedom. we will not stop. all the forces of eastland, barnett, wallace and thurmond will not stop this revolution if we do not get meaningful legislation out of this congress the time will come when we will not confine our marching to washington. we will march through the south through the streets of jackson through the streets of danville through the streets of cambridge through the streets of birmingham. and at this point he had to stop as the crowd responded to his calling of the roll of the civil rights battlefields from the summer of 1963. but we will march with the spirit of love and with the spirit of dignity that we have shown here today. by the force of our demands, our determination, and our numbers we shall splinter the segregated south into 1,000 pieces and put them back together in the image of god and democracy. we must say wake up america wake up for we cannot stop and we will not and cannot be patient. when john lewis finished, the

250,000 people listening cheered louder than they had for anyone all day. on the speakers platform every black speaker rushed up to lewis to shake his hand and pound him on the back. every white speaker stayed seated and stared into the distance. now, i think that's one of the great speeches of the civil rights movement or the rest of american -- the history of american political oratory. it's not something you hear often these days which is why i wanted to read the whole thing even in a book about "i have a dream." orn lewis' -- john lewis' was the highlight of the day. roy wilkins who's the head of the naacp announced the news of w.e. duabuse's death in africa. remember this has been a long fight, he said. now, regardless of the fact that in his later year dr. dubois chose another path. it's convertible that at the dawn of the 20th century his was the voice to call you to gather

today in this cause. there's a wave of applause that subsided into a referential silence. it's like moses said a woman. god had written that he should never enter the promised land. by the time that roy will kins finished his address the crowd was already tired for a long afternoon of speech-making. more marchers packed up toward the buses. several people left to go downtown in search of souvenirs. the crowd was dissolving when a. philip randolph introduced ms. mahalia jackson. at the mention of her name many in the jackson paused. she sang the two voices of a spiritual. then she closed her eyes for the third verse. i'm going to tell my lord when i get home. i'm going to tell my lord when i get home. yeah, i'm going to tell my lord when i get home how you've been mistreating me so long. she drew out the tale of the third stanza with a blue slide and the crowd shouted back to her. martin luther king, jr., seated near her at the platform was

openly enjoying her performance. he clapped his hands on his knees and called out to her a preacher urging the choir to sing. at the end of the verse, rustin came up to the podium because the song had apparently ended. thank you, rustin said to the crowd. away from the microphone. but ms. jackson was still humming the tune. she went back to the first verse and sang it again. rustin looked at her, a nervous smile on his face, his pad in hand but it was too late and she was already into the second verse. rustin gave up and started to sing up with her. he was a singer himself in choirs in college. stand by me, lord, stand by me. she finished and the marchers cheered for a encore. roger mud told mahalia jackson and all the speeches in the world couldn't have brought the response that just came from the hymn she sang, ms. mahalia jackson. the crowd was still of applauding they're demanding an encore yes she's still there she's going to sing again. the pipe organ at the lincoln

memorial had set some motion for rolling baseline. rustin clapped by her side in time of the crowd when ms. jackson finally left the microphone with sustained shouting is to a congregation from a gospel choir. after a speech from the american jewish congress aphilip randolph thanked the organizers of the march who he called a gifted young man for the organization of young men. then randolph took off his glasses and said at this time i have the honor to present to you the moral leader of our nation. someone in the crowd shouted, yes, sir. and the audience applauded. i should stop for a minute this is the last speech of the day and there was a little -- there's a controversy in the weeks before the march of who would get the honor of giving the final keynote address. and there was a lot of sentiment that roy wilkins should be the final speaker with some great justification as the head of the naacp, as someone who had been involved in civil rights for

many, many years. and a number of leaders, of course, argued for king not just because of king's role in the movement but because they thought he was the best orrater of the group and if king spoke last no one would want to go after him because everyone would go home and eventually this line of argument prevailed on the rest of the civil rights leaders and they gave i think can the last of the day but there was a belief that there was another reason that the other leaders were willing to let king go last. no one knew all the networks would be covering the march on washington live. everyone thought the best they would hope for would be clips to appear on the evening news. and the last speaker wasn't going to be speaking until quite late in the afternoon. and so some of the leaders thought by that time the tv cameras would already have left to process their film and so no one but the marchers who were there would remember the day's final speaker but, of course, by the time that king was speaking

everyone was rolling live. a great dedicated man, said philip randolph, the cheers of the audience almost drowned him out because people could see martin luther king, jr., making his way to the podium. a philosopher of the nonviolent system of behavior in seeking to bring about social change for the advancement of justice and freedom and human dignity king was at randolph's side. i have the pleasure of introducing dr. martin luther king, j.r. he finished his voice didn't carry over the cries of the crowd who cheered on in tribute. king placed his prepared speech in the lectern and looked out over the vast assembly. he wore a dark suit and tie. he had a pin to his lapel and he had a small smile on his face, he nodded a few times and said thank you to the crowd. the applause kept going. king adjusted his jacket and looked down at the podium waiting for the audience to finish. then he looked up and it seemed he would begin to speak but a hip, hip came someone from the

crowd and a hooray followed and king looked back down. the two cheers came again and the hooray seemed to surprise him because he looked up from his notes and he opened his mouth again but the hip, hip was out from the crowd and king had to listened to the final cheer and it happened again from a rolling collapse and shouts from the audience many people chanted king's name over and over. contrary to what some of the civil rights expected the television results had interrupted their regular programming what was happening at the lincoln memorial and millions of americans witnessed the ovation that king received. king grasped the podium with both hands, waited a moment and opened his mouth to speak. i'm 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. the crowd applauded with gracious restraint as if cheering themselves. when they finished king began to read from his written text. .. five score years ago, the great american in whose symbolic

shadow we signed 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 to withering unjustice. it came as a joyous day break to end the long night of their captivity. but 100 years later, the negro still is not free. 100 years later, the life of the negro is still sadly crippled by the 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. 100 years later, the crowd had been standing around in silence so far as they caught the repeated phrase, they responded. king waited for the applause to cease and then went on. the negro is still languished in the corners in society and finds himself in exile in his own land. i want to interrupt, i won't do this too often during the

speech, but the two themes that you just heard beginning with five score years ago and ending with 100 years later were themes that king had been using in speeches for some time. he was very conscious of the precedent of the gettysburg address when he was planning for his speech for the march on washington. of course, he knew he'd be speaking in front of the statue of the abraham lincoln. that's why you get five score years ago as the introduction to the speech. and the 100 years later refrain that he used is something he'd been using since he was 14 years old when he gave a speech at an or aer to competition which began with essentially the same argument you just heard him use in washington many years later, the emancipation proclamation and the reconstruction amendment were enacted, and 100 years later it seemed that very little had changed. and 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 wrote the magnificent words of the construction and the declaration of independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every american was to follow. this note was a promise that all men -- yes, black men as well as white men -- would be guaranteed the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. it is obvious today that america has defaulted on this note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. instead of honoring the sacred obligation, america's given the negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds. the crowd applauded at this point, and king delivered the one joke in the speech. but we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. many people laughed appreciatively. sure enough, shouted one woman. we refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great opportunity of this nation. and so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of

justice. the crowd responded and then became still. we have also come to this hallowed spot to remind america of the fierce urgency of now. this is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug. now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. now is the time to make justice a reality for all of god's children. the audience cheered after each line. it would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency at the moment. this sweltering summer of the negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn for freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end, but a beginning, and those who hope that the negro needed to blow

off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. at this, the people shouted agreement with the challenge that had been issued earlier by john lewis. there will be neither rest nor tranquility in america until the negro is granted his citizenship rights. the whirlwind of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. i'll stop for a moment there. there's two points in the middle of the speech that were seized upon afterwards by a number of people in politics and the media as the two main messages of the speech, in addition to i have a dream, which, surprisingly, didn't get as much attention as you might think it would. and what you just heard was one of them. there will be neither rest nor tranquility in america until the negro is granted his citizenship rights. the question on a lot of people's mind at the time of the march on washington was are the demonstrations in birmingham and in danville and in cambridge in the spring of 1963 it, are they going to keep going, are there going to be --

are they going to be of a different forum? and king answers that question very clearly and very defiantly in the same theme that john lewis had. demonstrations will continue until full civil rights are born. but there is something i must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold. the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. the crowd clapped in approval. we must forever conduct our struggle on the high plain of dignity and discipline. we must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. we must rise to majestic heights to meet the physical force with soul. the marvelous new mill tab a, which is engulfed in negro community, must not lead to us a distrust of all white people. for many of our white brothers as eded by their presents here today have come to realize that

their destiny is tied up with our destiny. the applause was in appreciation for the whites who had come to the march. and they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. we cannot walk alone. and this is the other section that people seized on, a number of people in the kennedy administration thought that these two points, the statement about the importance of nonviolence and the insistent on racial integration within the civil rights movement itself were the substitute of a political message in his speech. we cannot walk alone. and as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. we cannot turn back. there are those who are asking the civil rights, when will you be satisfied. we can never be satisfied. as long as the negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality, we can never be satisfied. the applause rose gently. as long as our body is heavy

with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging at the motel and highways and motels of the cities. the crowd shouted back, we cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. we can never be satisfied. as long as our children are stripped of their self hood and robbed of their dignity. we cannot be satisfied as long as the negro in mississippi cannot vote and the negro in new york believes he has nothing for which to vote. the screams of the crowd interrupted him again. he began no, and is he viewer he had the crowd for a moment, letting it build. no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a righteous scream. a roar like thunder from the audience. king skipped whole paragraphs of his speech and headed into hid planned conclusion. i am not unmindful that some of

you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. some of have you come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of brings brutality. you have been the veterans of creative suffering, continue to work that unearned suffering is redemptive. behind him, mihalia jackson shouted, tell them about the dream, martin. go back to mississippi, go back to alabama, go back to south carolina, go back to georgia, go back to louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. let us not wall owe in the valley of despair. she called to him again, tell them about the dream, martin. and perhaps because of something in the way the crowd was responding to him that day, martin luther king jr. left his prepared text entirely and began to preach. i say to you today, my friends, as the cheers made him stop for a moment, so even though we

face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, i still have a dream. it is a dream deeply rooted in the american dream. i have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. the crowd shouted, letting themselves be pulled along. i have a dream that one day on the red hills of georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. i have a dream that one day -- he had to speak louder now to be heard over the applause that was building -- even the state of mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. i have a dream. the crowd's response made him pause again briefly, and then he went on. that my four little children will one way live in a nation

where they will not judged by the content of their skin, but by the color of their character. i have a dream today, king turned away and the crowd screamed below him. people in the front row had joined hands and were swaying back and forth shouting, dream some more. he returned to the microphone, raised his right arm, and lifted his voice to a deafening wail. i have a dream that one day down in alabama, with its vicious racists, with his governors having his lips dripping with words of nullification, one day right there in alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white girls and white boys as sisters and brothers. i have a dream today. he paused again, and the crowd exploded. tell us, tell us, some members of the crowd shouted. dream on. i see it. keep dreaming, keep dreaming. i have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted and every hill and mountain shall be made low. the rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be mate strayed, and the glory of the lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall

see it together. this is our hope. this is the faith that i go back to the south w. he drew two sentences for near the end of his written speech, which had been lying unlooked at on the podium for several minutes. with this faith, we will be able to cue out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. with this speech, we will be able to transform the jangling discourse of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. with the crowd calling back to him after almost every phrase, the response of the congratulation led us. he left us again. with this faith, we'll be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day as the building applause broke over this line. he went on in lyrical improvisation. this will be the day, this will be the day when all of god's children will be able to sing with new meaning, my country tis of thee, sweet land of

liberty of thee i sing, land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring. and if america is to be a great nation, this must become true. and so let freedom ring. from the prodigious hill tops of new hampshire, let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of new york, let freedom ring from the heightening alleghenys of pennsylvania, let freedom ring from the snow capped rockies of colorado. let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of california, but not only that. let freedom ring from stone mountain of georgia. let freedom ring from lookout mountain of tennessee. let freedom ring from every hill and mole hill of mississippi, from every mountainside. he nearly screamed the word every, and the shout build up again under him. many in the crowd were weeping uncontrollably. let freedom ring. and when this happened, the people's calls and yells made

him pause, and then he went on. when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of god's children, black men and white men, jews and gentiles, protestants and catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old negro spiritual, he raised his right arm in been diction and ended in a triumphant shout. free at last, free at last, thank god almighty we are free at last. he picked up his speech and stepped away from the podium to a great cry like the sound of the heaven being torn open. the cheers went on and on as the crowd seemed to shout back in unison. a short distance away at the white house, president john f. kennedy watched on television. he turned to one of his aides and said, that guy's really good. and that's it for the reading part. thank you.

if there's any questions, i'd be more than happy to take them. >> coretta king, did you confer with her about the speech? >> no, i didn't get to do that. >> and why didn't you mention jesse jackson since you mentioned bernard ruston and, you know, a. randolph? how come you didn't mention jesse jackson as being part of the program? >> oh, because jesse jackson wasn't part of the march on washington program. his involvement in the civil rights movement -- >> yes, he was. >> sneffs >> yes, he was. if you look in your history, you'll see he was. >> pardon me? >> yes, he was. >> ok, well then i'm wrong. >> it's been documented he's been there. >> oh, i'm sure he was there. i just know at the lincoln memorial, he wasn't the head of any civil rights group -- >> he was part of six. >> like john lewis gave the next speech and not reverend jackson.

i mean, i mean no slight to reverend jackson by not including him, it's just at that point at least he wasn't one of the speakers in the formal program that day. i'm sorry. i surely didn't mean to leave that impression. >> yes, hi. quick question. how were you able to collect the f.b.i. information? >> well, it's a great question. a number of libraries and archives have some of the f.b.i. files. the martin luther king center in atlanta has some of the f.b.i. files. the public library in new york city does. and there are a few published compilations that have pieces of them here and there, so i just landed and started reading around the time of the march, and that's where the material came from. >> when martin luther king says

that we're here to cash a check, do you think that he's saying that in reference to reparations? >> well, probably not. although the bad check metaphor that you're referring to is something that he had talked about with his aides several days before the march on washington. it's actually one of the only metaphors in the finished speech that we can date with certainty to three or four days before the march. and at that time, reparations weren't part of -- excuse me -- weren't part of the civil rights debate, which was focused mainly on different legislative solutions, and so it's pretty unlikely that that refers to, at least in the minds of the people who wrote it. >> you mentioned at the outset that your father's a lawyer and i'm actually one of your dad's partners. on behalf of our firm, congratulations. we're all very pleased for you. i did have a question. it came from something you said that i did not know before. i did not know that the king had deviate from the his

written text to give reports on the speech that we all remembered the i have a dream portion. were you able to discern whether or not that was something that he spoke, or was that something he had said in different forms of the speeches? >> well, it's a great question. it's something that he had -- i have a dream was something that he used many times before and after the march on washington. he used it in late 1962 in albany, georgia. he used it in early 1963 in detroit. he used it in birmingham. the deputies taped a meeting in birmingham where king used i have a dream. and unfortunately, they taped over the reel to reel, which is a horrible tragedy. but by the time of the march on washington, he had used it in a number of speeches as kind of concluding the tease. and so he had honed it to a pitch of excellence that he was able to useless at the march.

>> what was in his prepared speech that wasn't in his -- in the speech that he actually gave that he ended up dropping, and do you set that out? >> it's a great question. and there was -- there's a hunk in my book where i put the prepared speech and the delivered speech side by side so you can see actually exactly what he used and didn't use. and the main -- you know, he made minor alterations in his prepared speech. a couple of people who saw him on the podium saw him crossing out lines and scribbling new ones. i mean, really edited just up until the second he delivered it. and the main thing he cut were two sentences from near the end of his -- near the end of his prepared speech. if you give me just a heartbale, i'll see if i can find them. here they are. and so what he had planned to

say was, and so today, let us go back to our communities as members of the international association for the advancement of creative dissatisfaction. let us go back and work with all the strength we can muster to get strong civil rights legislation in this session of congress. let us go down from this place to ascrend other peaks of purpose. let us ascrend from this mountaintop, decline other hills. and this was going to be the penultimate set piece of his speech. and instead of using that, he uses, i have a dream. one of the interesting facts about the speech that he had given the speech he had written, we probably wouldn't be here today still talking about it. yes, sir? >> thank you. do we know if there's any organized response to the march to the speech among the community of segregationists leaders, maybe as you leave following the event?

>> it's a great question. we know -- we know that there was a lot of recognition with king's new visibility because of the speech. and we know, i guess ideological kin to the segregationists being the f.b.i., we know the f.b.i.'s reaction was there was a memo from the head. domestic intelligence division, the chief domestic spy in the f.b.i. the day after the march on washington that said, in light of martin luther king's dangerous and demagoguery speech yesterday, we must mark him now as the most dangerous negro of the future in this nation. i foregot his name, head of domestic intelligence. william sullivan, i think. oh, yeah. that's absolutely right. >> do you really admire martin luther king's speech?

>> that's a great question. i mean, you caught me. i admire it more than i can say. whenever i'm doing these readings, it's hard to pay attention to saying the speech instead of just getting choked up, it's so incredible and he's such a genius. and there's never been anyone like him. so, i mean, i admire his speech as much as i admire his whole career. >> if you were to explain why king's speech has lived on versus kind of john lewis' speech in a sense of king's at a very young age, how would you explain the differences between them two? >> that's a great question. you know, king, there's a number of reasons that king's speech lives on. i mean, the poetry and lyricism with his words, the music of his delivery which, of course, i can't capture, but there's an

audio version of a book called "a call to conscience" that has the whole thing. you can hear the cadences in his voice. but, you know, i think the real reason is that unforgettable series of visions at the end of the speech of an america free from racism. and there's nothing like that not only in john lewis' speech, but in any other political speech that i've been able to find from the era. i mean, the first thing i did when i was working on this book was to read all the congressional debates and presidential speeches on civil rights from brown versus board of education through the voting rights act. and tens of thousands of pages of material. and you will almost never find anyone standing up and describing a vision of what america could look like if this were truly a free and equal nation. and king's ability to do that in a year when that was very much not the case is, i think, the key to speeches and power.

>> president kennedy was killed shortly thereafter. and president johnson received most of the credit for the civil rights act. would you care to comment on that? >> well, sure. i'm not a scholar of either kennedy or johnson administrations, but in june of 1963, right after the successful settlement of the birmingham campaign, it was president kennedy who sent the civil rights bill to congress. and on june 11 of 1963, it was president kennedy who gave one of the great orations on civil rights from that period, a nationally televised speech that prefigures a lot of the language that king would use about the consistency between racial discrimination and segregation and america's founding argument. so although, i mean, i think one wouldn't want to slight president johnson's role in the

civil rights act, president kennedy obviously was a significant part of that achievement, as well. >> i understand that king was riding on the mccarty, but i'm struck by the philosophy of economics in the metaphor with figures like king and malcolm x. and how even with the panthers, the ideas of feeding children and poverty were taken into a much more marxist context. i'm wondering if you can enlighten me. i know that that would not probably have been possible in the 1960's, but how do you think king would reflect the current economic situation, and do you see development in his development ideas? >> i'm sure those are two great questions. on the first one, i mean, it's hard -- it's hard not to look at or to hear, i have a dream

and not be struck by how much has changed. and i mean, just the end of segregation with the civil rights movement, was able to achieve such an amazing transformation. but on the other hand, you know, you read the speech today, and one reason it's so fresh and so powerful 40 years later is that a lot of the problems are still very much with us. i mean, we think of it as a speech that's mainly about segregation in the south, but, of course, king talks about poverty and segregation in the north, as well. in reference to black americans living on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of vast ocean of material prosperity, the line we shall never be satisfied so long as negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. we will not be satisfied as negro in the south cannot vote and the negro in new york cannot vote. and king focused very much on the problems of poverty and segregation in the north with the same intensity and the same feeling as he was called by god

as he brought to segregation in the south. there's one reason it's such a pretty great topic for tonight is king gave another i have a dream speech that no one really knows about. at the end of 1967, on christmas eve, just a few months before his death, that speech showed the development of his dreams since the march on washington. and there's a line in there that very much goes to what you've just pointed out. he says, i have a dream that one day the idle industries in appalachia shall be revitalized and the empty bellies of mississippi shall be filled, and brotherhood will no longer be a word at the end of the prayer, but the first item on every legislative agenda. and i think that dream really captures where king was at the end. >> did malcolm x speak? >> no, he didn't. he was at the march.

he gave a free-wheeling, impromptu press conference while people were gathering. and after king spoke, he was near ruston and said, you know,this dream of king's is going to be a nightmare before it's all over. and that was the reaction. king picked up on that, as well. king started talking about how, in later years, he had seen his dream turn into a nightmare. he would always end by saying, i still have a dream. and so even at the end of his life, he would, despite the disappointments he faced in the north, despite seeing his dream turn on to a nightmare, he would still hold on to that hope. >> over there in the corner, sorry. >> with the building of the monuments in the second world war on the mall, do you think that will eliminate the opportunity for any other marches like this?

>> well, it's a fair question. you know, i don't think it will. i mean, i think so long as the lincoln memorial is a sacred gathering spot for people, no matter how many memorials monuments we build, it will still come there. but, on the other hand, of course, one part of your question is i don't know there will ever be another march in washington quite like the one they had in 1963. >> do you talk more about how music played a role in building up to the king's speech toward the end of the day? sure, absolutely. i mean, the most immediate precedent was mihalia jackson, but she was the end of a long parade of singers that day. peter, paul, mary, joan baez, the student on freedom singers,

who gave a performance in the washington monument, and the interesting thing about leading up immediately to king's speech with mihalia jackson is king and jackson knew each other, veryh admired each ote .. we know from the f.b.i. wire taps that they had spoken with each other the week before the march. miss jackson had suggested that maybe people were just jumping on the bandwagon a little late for civil rights now that the cause was picking up steam and can agree with her remark. of course, when king was listening to her, he's calling out to her and encouraging her to go on. of course, she does the same thing to him while he's speaking. so, you know, king being a preacher, raised in the church, had a long experience for the role that the choir of the hymns playing and setting the stage for the day's speakers.

>> first of all, i just want to say i appreciate you setting the personalities up in the context of the speech, and particularly drawing attention to lewis' words that day. obviously had his ear to the ground and we really appreciate hearing that. our having the chance to remember that, and then he was just curious if you would speak to king's character, which has been the subject of so much discussion in terms of the f.b.i. and on from that point. i am just curious if you would -- what you think in terms of, you know, you look at him at montgomery, and he wasn't the type of person to force his leadership on a group, but he was always s but he was always t as the one, so to speak and this is the same thing that happened

in washington. so i just wondered what were some of the, you know, church antecedents or what was the character that king was that made him that person. >> sure, that's great question. king, thinking back to montgomery in doing this project that i wasn't aware of, king never set out to be a civil rights leader as you know from the tone of your question. the bus boycott in montgomery started because of the city's black women and the ministers in montgomery were latecombers and king was nominated to lead the boycott and he said, well, if you think i can render some service, i will. and that emphasis of the call of service i think was of king's career. he said the civil rights career was a calling that god was

telling him what to do. he frequently didn't want to be part of it any longer. he was tired because he was speaking all the time. under enormous pressure. everything from the pressure of having to give a new speech every day to the regular death threats he received and he wanted to -- i mean, many times he wrote in letters he just wanted to go be the dean of religion somewhere at some small college. and just have a break. but, you know, he really felt compelled and driven by god, i think, to follow the path that he did. and, you know, it's an example of someone who wasn't -- i think his deep personal faith and conviction to what he thought the lord was calling him to do really propelled him throughout his career. >> i have a bit of an unfair question for you because when i

was listening to you, i kept listening to about how, you know, the key element of the civil rights movement was enfranchise voters. and how 250,000 people could come together on one day that happened to be my birthday so it's a very personal -- you know, i've never forgotten that that occurred on my birthday. but how people could be so passive in the year 2000 when many people were disenfranchised in the state of florida in a presidential election and their vote was literally, you know, stolen from them? >> it is a -- it is a fair question. it's certainly a timely one. you know, the -- if you look at king's speech and john lewis' speech, the central importance of the right to vote ran

throughout both of them. and, of course, was a driving theme of the entire movement, just as much as elimination of whites-only signs were. and i think -- you know, i think what you've caught on is that there is a danger that 40 years later after we have the voting rights act there's a danger that we will forget exactly how hard those gains were fought for and we'll take them for granted and not pay attention when they're being infringed today. >> yes. i'm sorry. i'm looking the wrong way. i apologize. [laughter] >> you mentioned about king being under pressure to give a different speech every day. and you mentioned that a few things that he had talked about with his aides before he gave that speech. how much of the speech, other than, of course, the dream and the impromptu parts -- how much of it was actually written for

him and how much did he write himself? >> it's a great question. king -- the march on washington speech was pretty unusual for king in that he even bothered to talk to his aides about what he was going to say. and that he took the time to write out and solicit their drafts. i think in 1963, he gave something like 350 speeches. there's no way he could do that every time he spoke. and one of the things that you'll see in my book is we have a few of the drafts by his aides sometimes in fragmentary form and you can laid them side-by-side with king's written text and what you notice is that even though king asked his aides for drafts, his final execution of the language and imagery was almost always king's own. and he never -- even though he was certainly not someone who was adversed to eliciting ideas from anyone he could get them from.

he never ceded final control of the words of the speech to anyone but himself. that's exactly what happened at the march on washington. and actually i should say something on that point. even though he would ask his aides to do -- to do drafts for him on pretty rare occasions, he would also -- his aides would also rework material that they had heard king use before. so it wouldn't be like, you know, someone writes something and then king just takes it. if you've ever done any speechwriting it's something that you tend to do and you hear something the principal says and you think of another way to reword it and then king would say -- king would see it and he would like some of it and he wouldn't like other parts and he would take what he could use and reform late it and jettison the rest. we have time for one more. yes. >> i wonder if you could comment on any relationship or communication that dr. king might have had with president kennedy? >> absolutely.

there were a fair number of t m them. king, just thinking back to the june 1963 speech that i mentioned a year ago in response to the question about president kennedy. king was watching that speech on television and was very much moved by it. and he gave kennedy the same compliment that kennedy would later give him. he's really good, although he didn't meet him to his face after that and just focusing a little bit on the communications right around the time of the march 'cause there's any number of them and that's probably a good place to demarcate it. shortly before the march when kennedy had a meeting at the white house of all the march leaders to talk about whether the march was a good idea, king was, of course, there. and king argued very forcefully for the march to occur even though he said it may seem ill

timed and he went on to say, personally i've never engaged in a civil rights was ill timed. many thought birmingham was ill timed and kennedy said yeah, including the attorney general. [laughter] >> which is the exchange i had. after the march on washington there was a meeting at the white house for all the march leaders. and the president went up to martin luther king and grabbed his hand and gave him a smile and said, i have a dream, acknowledging the success of king's best line of the day. but i think that is about it. thank you so much for being here. i appreciate your questions. thank you for coming. [applause] >> every sunday at 5:00 pm eastern booktv airs a program from our archives that coincides with a significant occasion that happened that week in history. for more history programming, check out american history television on c-span3 or visit

c-span.org/history. they features 48 hours and tv that helped document the american story. >> from frankfort, kentucky, booktv talks with connie crew, manager of the kentucky book fair. >> the kentucky book fair started 30 years ago, they're still involved today. we're a nonprofit organization. and our purposes are to provide grants to public schools and libraries. to bring readers together in a literary, if you will, atmosphere. and to promote the love of reading and literacy throughout the commonwealth. our last count we had about 4,000 people who attended our event. our focus is primarily on kentucky authors but we do accept regional authors and nationally known authors. over the past 30 years we had just a wonderful array of

authors, mickey mantle, erma bombeck, roslyn carter, roger mud but we do focuses on the kentucky writers as well. >> what role does the book fair play in the community. >> i think it's a institution. after 30 years we're one of the oldest in the country. we provide grants to public schools and libraries so that's our sole purpose. i'm the only paid staffer so we have about a 30-member board that governs throughout the year. and kind of guides me. >> how have you noticed -- has the readership changed, the demographics have changed? what have you noticed? >> our demographics is probably older, baby boomer and above. younger, and since we offer a wonderful array of children's authors and activities, people bring their grandkids now. so, you know, we're building on that new readership. >> and what dated did you say

the fair was going to be held. >> november 20th in downtown frankfort. >> booktv was in frankfort, kentucky as part of our cities tour where we visit several southeastern cities over the next few months. bring you a taste of their literary history and culture. our partner in frankfort, kentucky, was local affiliate frankfort plant board. for more information on this and events from other cities, visit c-span.org/localconten c-span.org/localcontent. >> long before he put his john hancock on the declaration of independence, he was arguably among -- arguably the wealthiest merchant banker in history living on an opulent mansion of boston's beacon hill with a amazing view of the landscape and seascape. hancock and his fellow merchants

in new england governed their businesses and communities with economic ruthlessness that often left their competitors homeless and penniless. like the days the tea party movement, the colonial tea party had almost nothing to do with tea. tea was nothing more than a social beverage for wealthy women. men seldom drank it and it ranked below ale and rum of the beverages that americans consumed most. the tea party movement that sparked the american revolution actually began 20 years earlier in the 1750s and '60s when new england business leaders like today's tea partiers supported a costly government war but refused to pay higher taxes to cover the cost of that war. the war had started in the early 1750s when overpopulation ie