“I Have a Dream” is first and foremost a speech about race and equality. King’s “dream” is that there will one day be an America in which people are judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” He hopes children will one day be able to play with each other and not be separated by the stains of segregation and prejudice. Only once this dream is realized can the nation and its people truly be free. It’s noteworthy that for King, the dream is not one either reimagining the past or simply moving on; instead, he lists the various scars of racism in American life, for it is crucial for the nation to admit there is racism in order to confront it.

Those scars include Black people being the “victim[s] of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality” and being unable to rent the same hotel rooms or eat at the same restaurants as White people. These horrors cannot be unwritten or merely forgotten, for pretending they don’t exist would prevent the necessary progress and spiritual cleansing America needs. This cleansing is necessary for America to live up to its original promise. That is, the end of racism is not only something for which King hopes but also something literally owed to all people, as the foundational texts of the United States asserted all men were equal.