The legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is far too important to cover in a few paragraphs, but even if you know just one thing about the Baptist minister, political philosopher, and civil rights leader, it’s probably that he delivered the famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington in August 1963.
This iconic speech cemented King’s status as one of the most powerful orators of our time. Delivered to an audience of around 250,000 people, the speech coincided with the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, powerfully underscoring the sobering fact that a hundred years after the Civil War and the end of slavery, African Americans in the United States were still denied civil and economic rights and subjected to racism.
In subsequent decades, “I Have a Dream” has been described as one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century, putting King on par with famous orators like Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. However, some 15 years earlier, Martin Luther King’s future as a public speaker looked doubtful. As a student at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, King received “C” grades in his public speaking courses during the 1948–1949 academic year. King had not been a strong student during his years at Morehouse College, either, possibly because he enrolled at the young age of 15.
However, by 1951, when he graduated from Crozer with a Bachelor of Divinity degree, he was earning straight A's. King had evidently decided to take his studies far more seriously and ultimately became both class valedictorian and student body president. He would also be accepted to Boston University’s School of Theology, where he earned his doctorate in 1955.
From “C” student to Nobel Peace Prize winner:
- Crozer was where King learned about Mohandas Gandhi’s teachings of nonviolence and civil disobedience, which deeply affected his philosophy as a civil rights activist. Gandhi had been assassinated in January 1948, less than a year before King entered the seminary.
- Some of the most famous lines of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech were partly improvised. During the speech, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson asked him to “Tell them about the dream, Martin!”, prompting him to depart from his planned remarks and utter the iconic words, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”
- Martin Luther King was 35—the youngest winner at the time—when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, four years before his assassination.
