Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s most memorable speech from his life as an activist, "I Have a Dream," was delivered August 28, 1963 before more than 200,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. as part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The speech not only helped to galvanize the already growing civil-rights movement across the country at the time, it also became one of the most influential and inspirational pieces of rhetoric in American history. Remarkably, midway through his delivery, King suspended his pre-scripted text and began to improvise; what resulted was the speech's most recognizable section, the passage in which the words "I have a dream" are passionately repeated.
