King Had a Dream in Earlier Speech

Nine months before giving his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. apparently tested the phrasing for the first time in Rocky Mount, N.C. “My friends of Rocky Mount, I have a dream tonight,” King told a crowd of nearly 2,000 people in November 1962. “I have a dream that one day right here in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will meet at the table of brotherhood.” King gave his famous address at the March on Washington in August 1963. Scholars had believed his first use of the “Dream” refrain came in Detroit in June 1963.