The Significance Of Martin Luther King's Speech

The 1950s, 1960s and 1970s were tremendously challenging times for African-Americans. They were not treated like white Americans just because of their skin color. Although slavery in the United States ended in the late 19th century, institutionalized racism continued to oppress African Americans even decades later. By the mid-20th century, blacks were still forced to use separate public utilities and schools from the superior ones reserved for whites; they suffered routine discrimination in employment and housing, as well as abuse and lynching from some whites, and they were unable to fully exercise their right to vote.

For decades, civil rights activists had been fighting these laws and social customs to secure equality for all Americans.

King's speech was part of the March on Washington, a gathering of more than 250,000 people in the nation's capital. African-Americans still were not treated as equals. Marches like this one and ones earlier in Detroit and other cities called attention to this fact. The speech was given in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, the monument honoring President Abraham Lincoln, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in the Southern states. By giving his speech there, King was wanting to call attention to how things were so terrible a century before (during the Civil War) and how some things hadn't changed so very much in 100 years. It brought Martin Luther King and his message of non-violence to a nationwide (and worldwide) audience. The speech was carried on radio and was reprinted in newspapers and magazines all over the United States and all over the world. After this speech the Congress moved faster in passing the Civil Rights Act. This set of laws was finally passed the next year, in 1964. Many of these laws gave African-Americans more equal treatment than they ever had before. King is to date the youngest male to win a Nobel Peace Prize, winning it in 1964 at the age of 35 (at the time he was the youngest overall for the Peace Prize). The youngest ever to win the Peace prize today is Malala Yousafzai who won it in 2014 at the age of 17. Martin Luther King had a vision of a society in which race was not an issue in how people were treated or in how they were allowed to live their lives. It’s a sad fact of today’s society that King’s vision is not a reality in America, or anywhere else in the world; but it is possible to say that his vision affected us. While nothing is perfect or complete in the battle for civil rights, the efforts of King and those like him have, in fact, changed the country and the