我有一个梦想 I Have a Dream
马丁·路德·金/Martin Luther King
马丁·路德·金（1929-1968），美国著名的黑人民权运动领袖，基督教牧师和律师，曾任南方基督教领袖会主席。被誉为近百年来八大最具有说服力的演说家之一。他出身于亚特兰大黑人牧师家庭，毕业于克泽神学院和波士顿大学，先后获得文学士、神学士及博士学位。1954年，参加美国有色人种协进会活动。1964年获诺贝尔和平奖。1968年4月，他在田纳西州孟菲斯被一位白人青年雷伊枪杀身亡，享年39岁。
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 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 and the chains of discrimination. One hundred 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 languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.
In a sense, we have 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 promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.