From the 1945 publication of our first prayerbook, Reconstructionist services have included readings and liturgy connected to American secular holidays like Election Day, Thanksgiving and Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Kol Haneshemah, the Reconstructionist prayerbook, contains this excerpt of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, one of the most famous speeches in American history. King was the final speaker of the Aug. 28, 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom. He spoke from an unadorned lectern on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in front of some 250,000 people.
He’d nearly finished with his prepared remarks when he looked up and spoke extemporaneously. He’d given a version of his “I Have a Dream” speech two months earlier, in Detroit, though the formulation was different this time, the words remain etched in the nation’s consciousness more than 60 years later.
Monday, Jan. 20, marks Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Below is a transcript of his celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on Aug. 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children…[And] we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream….
I say to you today, my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal….” This is our hope.
With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day….
So, let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia; let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee; let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi-from every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village, from every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black and white, Jew and Gentile, Protestant and Catholic, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!”