Daring to dream

Behind The Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed A Nation

ON A sultry late August afternoon in a nation’s capital, a man, who happens to be a black man, young, strong and dignified, moves to the podium and begins to speak. His name is Martin Luther King, Jr, an Atlanta-born Baptist preacher who, for the better part of 10 years has placed himself body and soul on the very forefront of a civil rights movement struggling to gain not only momentum but identity.

Today, he has something to say, something worth saying, and worth hearing. But what makes today different, and special, is that he is about to address an audience estimated at significantly greater than a quarter of a million in number.

Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, standing in the shadow-fall of the Great Emancipator, Mr King has something undeniable about him, a kind of gravitas. And he has earned his right to speak. This, after all, is a man who has bled for his beliefs and who will continue to do so, a man who will, in far too short a time, pay the ultimate price for his activism.

Already, he has been through the wars. His house was fire-bombed during the Montgomery bus boycott, back in ‘55. Three years later, he was stabbed in the chest during a book signing. He has endured imprisonment in Birmingham and incessant harassment at the hands of the authorities, most notably the FBI. He has braced himself against intimidation and death threat. And now, today, he is here to speak to the largest audience he has ever faced, even before taking into account the millions who can’t be here in person but who are gathered in groups around television sets across the entire country. To speak, to preach, and to deliver a few well-hewn truths.

The gathered throng, many of whom have travelled hundreds, even thousands of miles in anticipation of some magic, quieten and grow still. Calmly, serenely, the words come, carrying him and all whose ears and minds are open enough to hear forward into the hallowed realms of legend. “I have a dream,” he says, and from then on things will never be quite the same again.

List the iconic moments of 20th Century America and the odds are high that the March on Washington, staged on August 28, 1963 and driven by Civil Rights hero/martyr, Martin Luther King, Jr. will feature prominently alongside mentions of the attack on Pearl Harbour, the assassination of John F Kennedy, the peace-and-love bacchanalia at Woodstock, and the giant leap for mankind that landed Neil Armstrong on the moon. These were peak events in the life of a nation, moments when the impossible collided with reality.

Behind the Dream tells the convoluted story of organising the March, and recounts the birth of one of history’s greatest and most stirring speeches. It is in many ways a simple and straightforward eyewitness account of events. What elevates this book above most scholarly tomes is its rare and invaluable insider’s insight into not only the happenings of the day but also the people involved.

Clarence B Jones, as Mr King’s lawyer and confidante, played a critical role in the planning of the March. He is also the hand that drafted the initial version of that era-defining speech, though in fact only the bones of his efforts scored actual podium time.

With a lawyer’s precise, measured delivery, he spins out the facts of that day, careful with even the smallest morsel of detail. Through his unique first-hand perspective we learn, for instance, of J Edgar Hoover’s consistent harassment of Mr King and the movement’s other senior figures, as well as of the less-than-admirable role that Robert Kennedy, then Attorney General and possibly acting on his brother’s wishes, played in the proceedings.

We learn too of wire tapping, of the government’s initial resistance to the march until the magnitude of its importance and the tidal wave of world support became evident. And we learn of the armed response called to the ready should this avowedly peaceful protest evolve into something else, and of how, in the land of free speech, the platform’s soundboard system was secretly and illicitly fitted with a cut-off device that could be triggered upon the first mention of anything deemed incendiary.

With such insights, this book provides an education of a sort rarely offered. And yet, the real treasures come in the small diamond-hard moments of revelation. While, as a character in this particular passion play Jones rarely invades centre stage himself, his obvious love for his most iconic of clients and friends shines through on virtually every page.

We read with astonishment and wonder of how King’s passion for the gospel music of Mahalia Jackson proved the unexpected catalyst for the sudden mid-speech change of direction, an encouraging utterance from the ranks delivered in that heart-wrenching voice to “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin,” prompting a deviation from the script without even a single beat of rhythm lost. And incredible, too, that King had the oratory capability not merely to improvise in such coherent fashion but to actually dredge up the sort of words and emotions that will be remembered for all time.

The March on Washington stands defined and underlined in history books because it changed the rules of a dirty game. In 1963, America was still embroiled in undeclared racial warfare. Tensions were hopped up to punch drunk levels. With the southern states in particular still actively enforcing segregation, and with discrimination set in the very stone and fabric of society, the notion of civil rights, of fair and equal treatment for the African American in school, in work, in life, seemed little more than a fantasy. There wasn’t even room to indulge the notion of a black President. Yet the March, and the speech, left a crater in the consciousness of a country that was too big to ignore. Even today, for the downtrodden everywhere, the Dream abides.