I have a dream

"I have a Dream" is the identifying phrase of a famous speech by Martin Luther King Jr., the most famous black American civil rights leader of the 1960s. The speech was delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963. The speech speaks powerfully and eloquently of King's desire, shared by many around the nation, for a future where blacks and whites would coexist harmoniously.

This speech has been through years of court cases to determine, in various jurisdictions, whether it was ever copyrighted, and the United States court system recently laid down their rulings that this speech had never been copyrighted, since at that time it was required to post a copyright notice on printed copies to be distributed, and this speech was distributed without such an extra (C) Copyright notice as was then required in the US. The US revised this law in 1989, an no longer requires such notice.

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References and external links:

• The text of the speech can be found in the Project Gutenberg edition at: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=1691