The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, is so famous that it often eclipses his other speeches.
King’s greatest contribution to the Civil Rights Movement was his oratory, says Jason Miller, an English professor at North Carolina State University who has written extensively on King’s speeches.
“King’s first biographer was a dear friend of Dr. King’s, L.D. Reddick,” Miller says. Reddick once suggested to King that maybe more marching and less speaking was needed to push the cause of civil rights forward. According to Miller, King is said to have responded, “My dear man, you never deny an artist his medium.”
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