The speech “ I have a dream”, heyday of the civil rights movement
Sarah Fila-Bakabadio, historian of American and Afro-American studies and lecturer at CY Cergy Paris University, discusses the historical context in which Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech took place on 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, a major event in the struggle for the rights of black Americans. ” We are in what could be considered the apex of the civil rights movement, which is actually a movement that has been going on since the end of the 19th century. This is a time when the movement needs a boost of efficiency since the first law for desegregation took place in 1954 in schools. And in 1963, one of the longtime campaigners, Asa Philip Randolph, considered that it took a very significant event to force the hand of then-President Lyndon Johnson to push bills restoring the civil rights that African Americans and non-white populations had obtained after the end of the Civil War. So he brings together a number of civil rights associations, including the Martin Luther King association, to mount this event and call on as many Americans as possible from all states to join them in the United States capital. States and in this particular place of the Lincoln Memorial. The Lincoln Memorial is the place in honor of the president, Abraham Lincoln, who abolished slavery 100 years to the day before that date. »