Responses
The speech was lauded in the days after the event, and was widely considered the high point of the March by contemporary observers. James Reston, writing for the New York Times, said that “Dr. King touched all the themes of the day, only better than anybody else. He was full of the symbolism of Lincoln and Gandhi, and the cadences of the Bible. He was both militant and sad, and he sent the crowd away feeling that the long journey had been worthwhile.” Reston also noted that the event "was better covered by television and the press than any event here since President Kennedy's inauguration," and opined that "it will be a long time before forgets the melodious and melancholy voice of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. crying out his dreams to the multitude." An article in the Boston Globe by Mary McGrory reported that King's speech "caught the mood" and "moved the crowd" of the day "as no other" speaker in the event. Marquis Childs of The Washington Post wrote that King's speech "rose above mere oratory". An article in the Los Angeles Times commented that the "matchless eloquence" displayed by King, "a supreme orator" of "a type so rare as almost to be forgotten in our age," put to shame the advocates of segregation by inspiring the "conscience of America" with the justice of the civil-rights cause.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also noticed the speech, which provoked them to expand their COINTELPRO operation against the SCLC, and to target King specifically as a major enemy of the United States. Two days after King delivered "I Have a Dream", Agent William C. Sullivan, the head of COINTELPRO, wrote a memo about King's growing influence:
In the light of King's powerful demagogic speech yesterday he stands head and shoulders above all other Negro leaders put together when it comes to influencing great masses of Negroes. We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security.
The speech was a success for the Kennedy administration and for the liberal civil rights coalition that had planned the March on Washington. Some of the more radical Black leaders who were present condemned the speech (along with the rest of the march) as too compromising. Malcolm X later wrote in his Autobiography: "Who ever heard of angry revolutionaries swinging their bare feet together with their oppressor in lily pad pools, with gospels and guitars and 'I have a dream' speeches?"
Read more about this topic: I Have A Dream
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