Interesting MLK Follow-up and a Link to the I Have a Dream Video
While discussing yesterday’s blog post with Denise Ippolito and doing some additional research I found a very interesting piece on the Forbes web site here.
In How Martin Luther King Improvised ‘I Have a Dream” Carmine Gallo writes:
Few people know that the prepared text to Martin Luther King Jr.’s transformative “dream speech” did not contain the passage that started with “I have a dream;” the phrase that most of us remember as we mark the 50th anniversary of King’s famous speech. Something extraordinary happened around the seventh paragraph of the speech, an event that instantly transformed the speech from a good one to one widely considered the greatest speech of the twentieth-century. What happened in the second half of the speech carries an important lesson for today’s business leaders who need to inspire their teams.
In his book, “Behind the Dream,” King speechwriter Clarence B. Jones told the story of what really happened as King prepared for the speech and the astonishing thing that occurred as he was delivering it. I’ll summarize the story and follow it with the vital lesson it carries for contemporary leaders.
Click here to read the rest of this interesting, insightful and revealing article.
I Have a Dream Video
Scroll down a bit here to the video box and hit play to enjoy the complete 17 minute, 29 second video of the speech. As we saw in yesterday’s blog post, the writing and language in the speech is beyond powerful and the message intense. But hearing it all in Dr. King’s voice raises the experience to a new level. Many of you will want to listen to the speech more than once and share it with your children and loved ones.
