WASHINGTON: Tens of thousands of celebrants gathered at the Lincoln Memorial on Washington’s central mall on Saturday to mark the 40th anniversary of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” speech that galvanized America’s civil rights movement.

King delivered the moving speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 to 250,000 people, one-fifth of them white, who had turned out for the March on Washington.

At the time, many blacks still were being denied the right to vote. Others were murdered for trying. Blacks and whites in the south often could not use the same restaurants, hotels or public restrooms and drinking fountains.

King, himself, was assassinated by a sniper at a Memphis, Tennessee, motel on April 4, 1968. The fatal shot was fired by a white man, James Earl Ray, who died in prison in 1998.

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood,” King said, his vibrant voice sailing out over the expansive mall and reflecting pool from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

He would later receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

King’s son, Martin Luther King III, told Saturday’s crowd, “I know that my father was more than a dream.”

With black suffrage long a reality, King said the country must look to abolishing other injustices.

“We must abolish racial profiling,” he said, “and the death penalty.” “I call on the congress to establish a system that covers every person and every illness,” he said.

Saturday’s commemoration in downtown Washington was the third, after similar events in 1983 and 1993.

The original march demanded “jobs and freedom.” Forty years later, the slogans are much the same: King’s 40-year-old dream of equality has not been realized.

The commemoration began Friday night. Coretta Scott King placed a plaque to mark the spot on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where her late husband made the speech. A recording of the speech was played during the run-up to the event.

Scott King said she hoped “in the not too distant future” people could come to view her husband’s dream not as a vision “but as a glorious reality.”

A hundred political, religious and civil rights groups joined to organize this year’s march and to demand justice for the more than 36 million African Americans who make up 12 per cent of the US population.—AFP