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
Spoken byMartin Luther King Jr.1929–1968 · Baptist minister and civil-rights leader; spoken 28 August 1963
From King’s “I Have a Dream” address, delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28 August 1963. The line appears verbatim in the National Archives transcript ↗ of the speech, and King’s authorship is undisputed.
“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” Martin Luther King Jr., 'I Have a Dream' speech, March on Washington, 28 August 1963.
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Provenance
The source
Speech
“I Have a Dream”
Delivered
28 August 1963, Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.
Occasion
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
Speaker
Martin Luther King Jr.
… I have a dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. 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.
↑ the popular version usually drops the surrounding “I have a dream…” refrain and the “I have a dream today” tail
This paragraph came in the improvised finale of the speech — King set aside his prepared text after the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson called out, “Tell them about the dream, Martin!”
The Wikipedia record ↗ dates the speech to 28 August 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial and notes the “I have a dream” refrain was largely improvised.
The National Archives holds King’s signed copyright deposition and a March on Washington photograph in its MLK exhibit ↗, documenting his ownership of the speech.
Not public domain. King delivered the speech in 1963 and the text is owned by his estate; because he first distributed it to the press, a 1999 court ruling (Estate of King v. CBS) treated it as a ‘limited publication’ that preserved copyright. It will not enter the public domain until 2038, and commercial reuse requires a license from the King estate (per FindLaw ↗).
Context
Why it mattered
On 28 August 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. closed the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd estimated at 250,000. The most famous passage — including the line about his “four little children” — was not in his prepared manuscript.
As King neared the end of his written text, the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, seated behind him, urged: “Tell them about the dream, Martin!” King set his notes aside and improvised the soaring “I have a dream” sequence that made the speech immortal.
“Tell them about the dream, Martin!”
More on the line and its afterlife
The “content of their character” sentence has become the single most-quoted line of the speech, invoked across the political spectrum in debates over race, equality, and how to read King’s legacy.
Because King first distributed the speech to the press rather than releasing it broadly, a 1999 ruling treated it as a ‘limited publication’ that preserved his copyright — which is why the endlessly quoted text is still not free to reproduce commercially.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1929–1968 · Baptist minister and civil-rights leader
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) was a Baptist minister and the foremost leader of the American civil-rights movement, championing nonviolent resistance to segregation and racial injustice. He led the 1955–56 Montgomery bus boycott, helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. His “I Have a Dream” address at the 1963 March on Washington is among the most celebrated speeches in American history.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source — Chicago
Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream,” address delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C., 28 August 1963.
MLA (9th ed.)
King, Martin Luther, Jr. “I Have a Dream.” 28 Aug. 1963, Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.
APA (7th ed.)
King, M. L., Jr. (1963, August 28). I have a dream [Speech]. Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘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’?” Last verified 7 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-have-a-dream-that-my-four-little-children-will-one-day