Freedom of speech is a core American value. Martin Luther King Jr. used that freedom in his quest for racial equality in the United States.
To honor King’s January 15 birthday, fifth-grade students at Watkins Elementary School in Washington go to the Lincoln Memorial each year to recreate King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, which became a defining moment of the civil rights era.
In 2017, these students gathered, a few weeks after King’s birthday, to commemorate his oratorical gifts. Each student reads a line of the 1963 speech at a microphone and in front of a crowd, and in doing so, feels the power of his words.
