2016 Spreading the Dream Essay Documents
Documents
One: Excerpt from “I Have A Dream” Speech Text by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the
Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions
of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak
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to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is
still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years
later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.
One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds
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himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic
wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing
a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes,
black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the
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pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color
are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad
check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank
of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of
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opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon
demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to
remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to
take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now
is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.
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Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the
Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off
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steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.
There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The
whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice
emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into
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the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful
deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and
hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our
creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic
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heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the
Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as
evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our
destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot
walk alone.
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As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There
are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be
satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never
be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of
the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility
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is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped
of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "For Whites Only". We cannot be satisfied
as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for
which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like
waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
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I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you
have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for
freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality.
You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned
suffering is redemptive.
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Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to
Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation
can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have
a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
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I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold
these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal…."
Source: United States Archives
Document Two: Excerpt of the Declaration of Independence
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
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When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political
bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the
separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to
the separation.
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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
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Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that
Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to
right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of
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abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under
absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new
Guards for their future security….
Source: United States Archives
Document Three: “The Gettysburg Address” by Abraham Lincoln
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in
Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so
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dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might
live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground.
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to
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add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget
what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they
who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great
task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for
which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall
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not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Source: United States Archives
Document Four: Excerpts for the US Constitution (Preamble and 14th Amendment)
Preamble
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“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure
domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the
Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America.”
14th Amendment
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“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens
of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within
its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws….”
Source: United States Archives
Document Five: Excerpt from “Desegregation and the Future” Speech Text by Martin Luther King Jr.
…And then I come to a final point. And I think this is probably more important than any of the others. If
integration is to be a reality in the future, the Negro must decide himself to stand up courageously and
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protest against segregation wherever he finds it. Yes, we must depend on the law. We must depend on
the courts. We must depend on financial support but in the final analysis, the Negro himself must
assume the basic responsibility for no other reason than laws cannot enforce themselves. The thing
that we face now is to implement these laws. Segregation is already legally dead, but it is still factually
alive. It confronted its legal death on May seventeenth 1954. The problem which we confront now is to
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lift the noble precepts of our democracy from the dusty files of unimplemented court decisions and the
Negro himself must do something about this. And integration will not be some lavish dish that the white
man will pass out on a silver platter while the Negro merely furnishes the appetite. He himself must be
concerned.
So it means that we must rise up and protest courageously wherever we find segregation. Yes, we
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must do it nonviolently. We cannot afford to use violence in the struggle. If the Negro succumbs to the
temptation of using violence in his struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and
desolate night of bitterness and our chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless
chaos. There is still a voice crying out through the vista of time saying to every potential Peter, "Put up
your sword." History is replete with the bleached bones of nations and communities that failed to follow
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the command of Jesus at this point. No, violence is not the way. Hate is not the way. Bitterness is not
the way. We must stand up with love in our hearts, with a lack of bitterness and yet a determination to
protest courageously for justice and freedom in this land.
I realize that this will also mean suffering and sacrifice. It might even mean going to jail, but if such is
the case we must be willing to fill up the jailhouses of the South. It might even mean physical death. But
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as Dr. Kenneth Clark said in a speech here last year, if physical death is the price that some must pay
to free their children from a life of permanent psychological death, then nothing could be more
honorable. We must somehow confront physical force with soul force and stand up courageously for
justice and freedom….
Source: United States Archives
2016 Spreading the Dream
Writing Prompt
Based upon your reading and the evidence contained in the articles provided, support your answer in a formal
essay to the position below:
The history of the United States can be examined by reviewing official documents as well as the speeches and
thoughts of American leaders. Using only the documents provided and citing specific evidence contained within
them, develop and support the position that integration of our public schools for all students, regardless of
color, corrected a social injustice and was based on law and the history of the United States.
Please note this essay is not timed but does have a due date. Please see your teacher for the due date.
You do not need to use all five of the sources, but you should use more than one of the sources. Be sure to
correctly cite the sources. Be sure to manage your time carefully so that you can
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Read the passages
Plan you essay
Write your essay
Revise and edit your essay
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Include a claim
Address counterclaims
Use evidence from multiple sources included in the articles provided
Avoid overly relying on one source
Be sure to
Your written response should be in the form of a multi-paragraph essay. Remember to spend time reading,
planning, revising, and editing.