0:00 You see that water rippling down the creek?0:03 Looks calm enough on top, but there's a current underneath that'll knock a man flat.0:09 August twenty-eighth, nineteen sixty-three was just like that.0:14 Two months after we watched Kennedy stare down the Berlin Wall with his scribbled notes, Martin Luther King Junior walked up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with three mimeographed pages, totally exhausted.0:29 Ey up, Earl, he hadn't slept a wink, had he, love?0:33 Sat up till four in the morning at the Willard Hotel, pencil in hand, crossing lines out while his advisors argued about what he ought to say.0:43 Now, I know how that sounds, but hang on.0:46 His team didn't want him mentioning any dream.0:50 Wyatt Walker told him straight out, don't use that line, it's trite, you've used it too many times already.0:58 Swear on my tackle box, that is the honest truth.1:01 King walked out to that podium fixing to read a formal address about a bad check America had bounced.1:09 It was baking hot, too.1:10 Two hundred and fifty thousand folk packed around the Reflecting Pool, dabbing their foreheads, feet dangling right in the water just to cool off.1:21 You could smell the wet grass and wool suits baking in the sun.1:26 I was standing — well, you felt like you were standing right in the wings behind those white marble columns, watching him grip the lectern.1:36 He started out stiff, reading right off the paper, speaking about promissory notes and the architects of our republic.1:45 But then summat shifted, didn't it, chuck?1:48 Mahalia Jackson was sitting just behind him on the platform.1:52 She'd heard him preach down in Detroit months before.1:56 And right as he paused to turn a page, she called out to him.2:01 She shouted, "Tell 'em about the dream, Martin!" Twice, she said it.2:06 Louder the second time.2:08 Ooh!2:08 Sends a shiver right down your spine, that does.2:11 She nudged history right off its script.2:14 Yes way, and here is how it happened.2:17 King looked down, took those typed papers, and slid them over to the left side of the lectern.2:24 When a preacher moves his text aside, you know the train has left the depot.2:30 His whole posture changed.2:32 He wasn't reciting law no more; he was preaching prophecy.2:36 That voice started ringing out across the water, smooth as silk and heavy as iron.2:42 He looked right out at that sea of faces — black and white folks holding hands, church ladies in their Sunday best, union lads in paper caps.2:53 Now, you stay with me here.2:55 That speech was radical.2:56 People forget that today.2:58 They soften it into a nice nursery rhyme, but back then, the F.B.I.3:03 had wiretaps on his room, calling him the most dangerous man in America.3:08 The Kennedy administration had a switch right offstage — an audio engineer had his hand on the master kill-switch to cut the sound system if anyone started a riot.3:21 Can you imagine the cheek of that?3:23 Having your finger hovering over the plug while a man speaks about his babes playing together.3:30 Mm-hmm.3:31 They thought peace was flammable.3:33 But King leaned right into the microphone, his chest heaving, sweat rolling clean down his neck, and he called out the promise this country failed to keep.3:44 When he hit that crescendo — "free at last" — you could hear the whole National Mall take one giant breath together.3:53 Longer than a coal drag, quieter than a crappie bed at dawn, before that crowd just ERUPTED.4:00 It fair took the roof off, and there wasn't even a roof there!4:04 You know, it reminds me of old street rallies back home, when someone finally says the thing everybody's been carrying in their hearts for forty years.4:16 It breaks the dam, Earl.4:17 Well, look, you see that pattern throughout history.4:21 You saw it with Frederick Douglass on the Fourth of July in eighteen fifty-two.4:27 A leader takes the nation's own founding documents, holds them up to the light, and says, your signature is on this note, now PAY it.4:37 Exactly, love.4:38 It wasn't an apology; it was an invoice.4:41 And it rattled the powers that be right down to their boots.4:45 Within a year, they had the Civil Rights Act passed, then the Voting Rights Act after that.4:52 But here's the catch.4:54 We remember the poetry because it goes down easier than the demand.4:59 King spent the rest of his days pushing for fair wages and housing, and the crowds got smaller, and the stones got heavier.5:08 People loved the dream; they weren't too keen on waking up to pay the bill.5:13 That's the wicked truth of it, Earl.5:16 It's easy to build a bronze statue of a man once he's gone, but much harder to live alongside what he actually asked of you.5:25 Well.5:26 That is about the size of it.5:28 A man standing on borrowed steps, tossing his prepared script aside, betting his life that folks could hear the truth if he just said it plain.5:38 Night night, sleep tight, chuck.5:41 We'll keep our ears open for the whistle next time.
