King's introduction is blunt: "One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir." (King, 1963)

The introduction, however, although not as famous as the speech's conclusion, serves not merely as a crowd-pleaser or an attention getting device to rally the weary souls of the marchers of the movement King lead, but does actually state, quite explicitly, the real, concrete physical goals of the march. King's idealistic conclusion is remembered, but he did not merely call for racial equality, he...
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