On this day in 1963

JUNE 23, 1963

Martin Luther King Jr. led a massive march, joined by as many as 125,000, in Detroit. The words he shared in his speech were similar to those in the “I Have a Dream” speech he delivered two months later from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

He mentioned his friend, Medgar Evers, who had been assassinated just 11 days earlier, and Emmett Till, whose brutal killing helped propel the modern civil rights movement.

“Before the victory is won, some, like Medgar Evers, may have to face physical death. But if physical death is the price that some must pay to free their children and their white brothers from an eternal psychological death, then nothing can be more redemptive,” he said. “I have a dream that there will be a day that we will no longer face the atrocities that Emmett Till had to face or Medgar Evers had to face, that all men can live with dignity.”

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