In honor of Dr. King’s birthday, we thought it would be fitting to present what is known as the “I Have a Dream” speech in the economic context in which it was originally created. Many remember the speech as a rallying cry for equality for all people, which it was. But its original intent was to call for an end to economic inequality for all people and a demand for the right to gainful employment for all.

(Full text of the speech available here through the Library of Congress)

While we commonly refer to it as the ‘Dream’ speech, it was really a combination of several speeches that Dr. King had been delivering during the tumultuous years of 1962-63 as the Civil Rights movement was in full swing in America . Dr. King delivered the speech on August 23, 1963 from the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It was an homage to President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and also timed to pay tribute to the centennial anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.

The March on Washington, August 23, 1963
Bettman/Getty Images.

While most of remember these thunderous and passionate lines from the speech:

 "…I have a dream 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. I have a dream today!"

It’s the beginning of the speech, in the third paragraph, that speaks to righting the wrongs of the economic inequalities suffered by African-Americans since emancipation.

 “We’ve 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 … Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’ But we refuse to believe that bank of justice is bankrupt.”

The notion of the government writing a bad check was nothing new in America. Alexander Hamilton and many other founders of the American republic used similar metaphors to describe our profligacy throughout history. Given the magnitude of the U.S. deficit, we are arguably writing bad checks every day as a nation, although our current deficit is in the trillions. Dr. King was not addressing the nation’s debt in that context at all.

King’s point was that the economic system America had grown into had left African-Americans and poor people behind, entirely. Sadly, income inequality has only become worse in the U.S., and around the world in the past 60 years. Wealth is concentrated in a very narrow percentile while most of the world lives on meager wages that most of us could not even buy lunch with today. For those fortunate enough to have stable jobs, wage growth has barely budged - relative to inflation – in 50 years. The path to a stable middle-class life has disappeared for millions of hard working people who live paycheck to paycheck, and can’t save or invest for the future.

Later in the speech, King addresses the ‘market operation of our economy’ that propagates unemployment and idleness. While King had no idea that technology, artificial intelligence and smart robots might one day come for our jobs, he was referring to the profit driven motivations behind our market system that compel executives to manage to maximize the bottom line and boost share prices. While we root for higher profits as investors, we don’t think enough about creating a sustainable economic system that addresses the welfare of all people or the impact on our planet. King was addressing the former through these words:

"..We have come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands it does not eliminate all poverty."

King’s solution, while controversial then and now, was to force government to create a labor economy wherein the government would create jobs to ‘enhance the social good’, for those people who could not find work. Some may call that a ‘welfare state’. Others might consider it a form a socialism. For King, it was about the fundamental right to work so that everyone could reach their potential and become consumers to keep the economic pump primed. In his own words:

The problem indicates that our emphasis must be two-fold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available…

This was not King’s only economic speech, to be sure. On April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated in Memphis. Tennessee, he delivered a speech at the Mason Temple in support of striking sanitation workers. It’s worth a read.

While some may not agree with Martin Luther King’s ideas or the principles behind the Civil Rights movement, his impact is undeniable. Dr. King was able to connect the rights of all people in America to the economic system and the injustices it manifests through his essays, speeches and teachings in ways that profoundly changed the moral consciousness of this country.

For that and so many other reasons, we celebrate him on this day.