After 50 years, King’s ‘Dream’ lives on

Wednesday marks the 50th anniversary of an estimated 250,000 social activists’ assembling for the March on Washington, one of the largest political rallies in U.S. history. The daylong demonstration is credited for significantly progressing the nation’s civil rights movement, but 17 minutes in particular would live on in oratorical history. That’s how long it took Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech, which didn’t originally have that title. It was first called “Normalcy—Never Again,” but King ad-libbed heavily when the audience responded vocally to that key phrase.