bjbjLULU JUDY WOODRUFF: For the past seven years, to mark this holiday, children from
an elementary school in Washington, D.C., have gone to the Lincoln Memorial on the National
Mall.
There, they have recited the "I Have a Dream" speech, just as Dr. King presented it 48 years
ago.
Before their reading this year, students of Watkins Elementary stopped to tour the Martin
Luther King Memorial.
We caught up with the fifth-graders who were excited to perform the speech again this year.
KENDI HENDERSON, 10, Watkins Elementary: It's sort of scary, especially when I go, like,
to the microphone to speak.
There's a shiver all over my body.
And it's like, OK, I have got to do this.
QUESTION: Why does it make you shiver?
KENDI HENDERSON: Because there's, like, a whole lot of people.
And it's hard to not -- like, just to look at them.
Like, oh, that's a whole lot of people out there.
WILL KAMMERER, 10, Watkins Elementary: I think it's the most historic speech ever.
But that's just me.
And it's like -- it's just a really cool speech.
SKY MAREY STRINGER, 10, Watkins Elementary: You get to tell people what he said and what
he's done.
Since it was way in the past, you get to tell them, like, what he -- what he said to help
people, to get people going on, this is wrong and you shouldn't be doing this.
JEREMIAH IVAN STROMAN, 10, Watkins Elementary: Martin Luther King was, like, the greatest
African-American ever in civil rights history.
QUESTION: Is that why you are looking to reading his speech on the steps of the Lincoln?
JEREMIAH IVAN STROMAN: Yes.
It's an honor.
It's special.
MARSTEN DAVIS, 10, Watkins Elementary: Martin Luther King gave the speech so he could tell
his community to, like, stand up for themselves, so he could rise from segregation and discrimination
to freedom and equality.
JUDY WOODRUFF: We close now with an encore of these students reading last year on this
holiday.
STUDENT: I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest
demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
STUDENT: Five score years ago, a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed
the Emancipation Proclamation.
STUDENT: This momentous decree came as a great beacon of light of hope to millions of Negro
slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.
STUDENT: It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
STUDENT: But, 100 years later, the Negro still is not free.
STUDENT: One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the
manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.
STUDENT: One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the
midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.
STUDENT: One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of the
American society, and finds himself an exile in his own land.
STUDENT: So, we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
STUDENT: 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.
STUDENT: This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men, as well as white men,
would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
STUDENT: It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar
as her citizens of color are concerned.
STUDENT: Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check,
a check which has come back marked as insufficient funds.
STUDENT: But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.
STUDENT: We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of
opportunity of this nation.
STUDENT: So we have come to cash this check...
STUDENT: ... a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security
of justice.
STUDENT: We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency
of now.
STUDENT: This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing
drug of gradualism.
STUDENT: 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.
STUDENT: 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 God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment.
STUDENT: This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until
there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
STUDENT: 1963 is not an end, but a beginning.
STUDENT: I say to you today, my friends...
STUDENT: And, 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.
STUDENT: I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true
meaning of its creed.
STUDENTS: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
STUDENT: I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves
and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of
brotherhood.
STUDENT: I have a dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering
with the heat of injustice...
STUDENT: ... sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom
and justice.
STUDENT: I have a dream that one day, that my four little children will one day live
in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content
of their character.
STUDENT: I have a dream today.
STUDENT: I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with
its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification...
STUDENT: One day, right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be
able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
STUDENT: And when this happens, when we let freedom ring, we let it ring from every village,
from every hamlet, from every state, from every city...
STUDENTS: ... we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black
men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands
and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last!
Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) gd$2 gd$2 :p$2 urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags City urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags
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place JUDY WOODRUFF: For the past seven years, to mark this holiday, children from an elementary
school in Washington, D Normal Microsoft Office Word JUDY WOODRUFF: For the past seven years,
to mark this holiday, children from an elementary school in Washington, D Title Microsoft Office
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