A peaceful movement, a violent response
Martin Luther King, Jr. preached peace, but Civil Rights demonstrators often found government-backed responses to their protests to be anything but peaceful
On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. [King, via American Rhetoric]
Many of those in attendance that day in Washington, D.C., had already met violent resistance. And many more would experience such moments before King's dreams became — in most cases — a reality.
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Here, we look back at a struggle that was at times violent — and hope for a time in the future when such instances are once and for all truly a thing of the past.
