A Dream Remembered? Martin Luther King Jr and the Grassroots Civil Rights Movement

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28th 1963, Martin Luther King Jr delivered one of the most famous speeches of all time. But it nearly didn’t happen. On this special edition of Making Contact for MLK Day, Gary Younge, author of The Speech talks about Martin Luther King Junior’s Dream and the story behind it.

Special thanks to the New School for use of their recording.

Guest: Gary Younge, a British journalist, author and broadcaster. Younge is a feature writer and columnist for The Guardian. He writes a monthly column for The Nation called “Beneath the Radar.” His book, No Place Like Home, in which he retraced the route of the civil rights Freedom Riders, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award in 1999. Younge also has made radio and television documentaries on subjects ranging from the Tea Party movement to hip-hop culture. From 2001 to 2003, he won Best Newspaper Journalist Award in Britain’s Ethnic Minority Media Awards three years in a row. In 2009, Younge was appointed the Belle Zeller Visiting Professor for Public Policy and Social Administration at Brooklyn College, where he taught both graduates and undergraduates for two years.


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