The American Dream – Martin Luther King Jr.
Delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, on 4 July 1965.
I planned to use for the
textual basis for our thinking together that passage from the prologue of the
book of Job where Satan is pictured as asking God, "Does Job serve thee
for nought?" And I’d like to ask you to allow me to hold that sermon ["Why
Serve God?"] in abeyance and preach it the next time I am in the
pulpit in order to share with you some other ideas. This morning I was riding
to the airport in Washington, D.C., and on the way to the airport the limousine passed
by the Jefferson monument, and Reverend Andrew Young, my executive
assistant, said to me, "It’s quite coincidental that we would be passing
by the Jefferson Monument on Independence Day." You can get so busy in
life that you forget holidays and other days, and it had slipped my mind
altogether that today was the Fourth of July. And I said to him, "It is
coincidental and quite significant, and I think when I get to Atlanta and go to my pulpit, I will try to preach a sermon in
the spirit of the founding fathers of our nation and in the spirit of the
Declaration of Independence." And so this morning I would like to use as a
subject from which to preach: "The American Dream." (Yes, sir)…
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