Backstage at History: The Untold Stories Behind Iconic Speeches

Out past the porch railing, you can hear a train whistle way off down the valley, carrying clean through the August heat. It gets you thinking about how a single sound can carry across a whole country. Last week we stood backstage at history's loudest rooms, listening to what the speaker felt right before the curtain pulled back. And August twenty-eighth, nineteen sixty-three, was no golden picnic. No, not by half, love. I have got my brew here, the cat is curled on my knee, and I can tell you: behind the scenes in Washington, nerves were stretched thin as wire. People forget that. They look back and see a grand painting, but that morning, the organizers were terrified.

The sound system had even been sabotaged the night before. That is the honest truth. Down at the Lincoln Memorial, folks were working in the dark just to splice wires together so anyone could hear a word. And the White House had thousands of troops on standby because everyone in authority expected a riot. Over two hundred and fifty thousand people gathered under that scorching sun, standing packed round the Reflecting Pool. Packed shoulder to shoulder, singing spirituals, peaceful as a church choir. But backstage? Mercy. You had the Big Six civil rights leaders practically having rows behind the marble pillars. Young John Lewis—bless him, he was just a lad of twenty-three then—had written this fiery speech ready to tear strips off the federal government.

He was fixing to say there wouldn't be any cooling-off period. Now, I know how that sounds, but old A. Philip Randolph had to pull John Lewis aside right behind Lincoln's statue. He looked at him and said, John, for the sake of unity, we have got to moderate this. So Lewis sat there on the steps, crossing out lines with a pencil minutes before walking to the microphones. Everyone pulling in different directions. Malcolm X was outside calling the whole thing a circus, saying it had been softened up to please white politicians. Martin had Birmingham hanging over his shoulders, jail cells, and the weight of the entire movement resting right on his chest.

He was only supposed to speak for four minutes. The program was running late, folks were wilting in the heat, and he had a typed draft sitting on the lectern that didn't have the word dream in it anywhere. That is the bit that gives me shivers every single time. He started out reading the text, plain and measured, talking about the hundred years since Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and how the promissory note had bounced with insufficient funds. He was leaning on the page. Solid, but tied down to the paper, like an engine stuck in low gear on a steep grade. And then she called out. Mahalia Jackson was sitting right there behind him on the platform.

The greatest gospel singer in the world, and she just leaned forward and shouted, Tell them about the dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream! Yes sir. She had heard him preach it months earlier down in Detroit. When she shouted that, King stopped. If you watch the old film, you can see him slide his papers to the left of the lectern. He stopped looking down. He grabbed the edges of that wooden stand, looked straight out over two hundred and fifty thousand faces, and shifted gears into a Sunday morning pulpit. He threw the script away entirely! You could hear that great rolling rhythm take over, repeating I have a dream, eight times over, building higher with every sentence.

When he said he had a dream that his four little children would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, the hair stood up on everyone's arms. He took sixteen minutes instead of four, and nobody moved an inch. He brought the rhythm of an East Tennessee mountain church straight to the steps of the nation's temple. But here is the part that sits heavy. While the crowd was cheering and people were weeping in the water, the authorities were already drawing their knives. Aye. Just two days later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a memo calling him the most dangerous man in America, scheming to tear him down.

The golden glow we paint over that day was never there for the man who actually stood on the marble. It took blood, and another two years of marches, to get the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act through Congress. That speech wasn't a finished victory; it was a promissory note he threw down like a gauntlet. Right then, love. It is easy to look at the statue and forget the sweat, isn't it? But you have to remember the courage it took to put down the paper and speak what was true in his heart. Night night, sleep tight, chuck. Well. That is about the size of it. We will see you down the line.