Martin Luther King's civil rights march where he said 'I Have A Dream' to be commemorated on 57th anniversary
A rally to commemorate the 57th anniversary of Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I have a Dream’ speech will take place at Washington DC on Saturday.
The national commemoration of the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington is being held amid widespread protests and unrest over the police killings of black Americans and the Black Lives Matter movement.
One of the organisers, the Reverend Al Sharpton said the march will comply with coronavirus protocols in the District of Columbia with participants wearing masks and hand sanitisers available.
"We’re following protocol,” Reverend Sharpton said. “The objective is not how many thousands of people will be [in Washington]. It’ll still be a good crowd.”
It will begin with a rally at the Lincoln Memorial with Martin Luther King III, a son of the late civil rights icon, attorney Benjamin Crump and the families of George Floyd, TrayvonMartin, Eric Garner, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, expected to be in attendance.
Afterwards, participants will march to the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial in West Potomac Park, next to the National Mall, and then disperse.
“The objective is to put on one platform, in the shadow of Abe Lincoln, the families of people that have lost loved ones in unchecked racial bias,” Reverend Sharpton said. “On these steps, Dr King talked about his dream, and the dream is unfulfilled. This is the Exhibit A of that not being fulfilled.”
Who was Martin Luther King Jr?
Dr King was a civil rights activist and Baptist minister who was a key figure in the USA's civil rights movement from the mid 1950s until his assassination in 1968.
His non-violent stance inspired people worldwide making him an international icon of social justice.
King and his supporters challenged voting registration tactics that barred African American voters from election polls and tackled incidents of segregation and discrimination, particularly in the South.
Why is the I Have A Dream speech so iconic?
Dr King delivered a speech, known today as 'I Have A Dream', in front of 250,000 people who gathered at the Lincoln Memorial following the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963.
The historic moment was widely seen as a fundamental turning point in the fight for civil rights.
The following year, the then US President Lyndon B Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act which banned segregation and discrimination due to race, gender and religion.
Dr King described the Act, which was expanded the following year to include voting and housing rights, as "nothing less than a second emancipation".
That same year, Dr King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Four years later, Dr King was gunned down on the balcony of the old Lorraine Motel in Memphis, aged just 39. His death sent shock waves across the US and the world.