This speech has been through years of court cases to determine,
in various jurisdictions, whether it was ever copyrighted, and
the United States court system recently laid down their rulings
that this speech had never been copyrighted, since at that time
it was required to post a copyright notice on printed copies to
be distributed, and this speech was distributed without such an
extra (C) Copyright notice as was then required in the US. The
US revised this law in 1989, an no longer requires such notice.
I have a Dream
by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington
D.C. on August 28, 1963
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow
we stand 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 captivity.
But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that
the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of
the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation
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