Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech on this day on Aug. 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington, Washington, DC. (Video of Dr. King's famous speech appears below)

"And one day we must ask the question, Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society...

“The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty”.

- Martin Luther King
August 16, 1967

Written by Jackie Mothershed on January 15, 1978

On the anniversary of a hero. To honor him.

Four or five billion years back
Or maybe longer ago
I really don’t know
We were brilliantly conceived
It’s now generally believed
In a nova! novel? No

But singular looking back
Very little chance
The humanity dance
Could occur even twice 
Unlikely happenstance

The nova orgasm left little eggs
For what it was worth
In a place called earth
Able amniotic of slime
Gestating artistry of time 
Gave Humanity birth

We’re up on our legs
We're patting our backs
But for all of our facts
And arsenal of toys
We’re little girls and boys
Of reds and yellows whites and blacks

Up from the mud and slime
So very far to go
We’d probably never grow
If that same god of chance
Didn’t mark humanity’s dance
With the occasional human hero

Who keeps the measure and time
But cranks the key
Lifting humanity
To higher plateaus
To far off crescendo
Of our maturity

We honor these heroes
Who set us free
To let us be
The immensity
Of our destiny

Heroes like Lao Tze and Buddha
Like Moses and Jesus
Like Schweitzer and Ghandi
Like King

For you and for all you were responsible for starting
We gratefully remember and we honor you Martin

"I Have A Dream!" Martin Luther King, August 28,1963