The Most Important Word!

Directions: After reading the speech excerpt, think back and choose what you consider to be
the most important word from the reading. Then, answer the following questions on the lines
provided.

1. What do you consider to be the most important word that best summarizes the main
idea of the speech?

The most important word is freedom

2. Describe how your word affected you. Use specific ideas, feelings, and/or examples.
I believe this didn’t affect me personally, although the use of the word in all of it’s context has a
power and a force that embraces how important the word is to the people who want it.

3. Describe how you think your word would have affected volunteers on the Freedom
Rides and Freedom Summer? Use specific ideas, feelings, and/or examples.
I think that a lot of people would look by all of the speeches and such, but the people that do listen
and watch will know how important every person is and that they have to fight together.
…There are those who are asking the supporters of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?”…We
can never be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York
believes he has nothing for which to vote….

I say to you today, my friends, that even though we face difficulties, 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.”…I have a dream that
my four little 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….

This is the faith that I go back to the South with. 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….

*adapted from a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. From Great Issues in American History, Vol. III, by Richard Hofstadter.