He had a dream

In honour of today’s remembrance of Martin Luther King, Jr, today’s entry is a pointer to a Fresh Air radio program to air today, a talk with Clarence Jones, who helped write Dr King’s famous I Have a Dream speech.

Text without context, in this case especially, would be quite a loss. One might imagine standing before an audience and read­ing Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech verbatim, but it is a stretch to believe that any such per­formance would sow the seeds of change with, as Dr. King put it that day in Washington, the fierce urgency of now. The vast crowd, the great speaker, the words that shook the world — it all comes as a package deal. We are truly fortunate to have a record.