As we prepare to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.&8217;s birthday this week, we look back at his most enduring words, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963. King&8217;s dream is not quite realized, not in every corner of America, but we keep it alive.

&8220;I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: &8216;We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.&8217; 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. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four 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. …

&8220;When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God&8217;s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, &8216;Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!&8217;&8221;