Even among civil rights leaders there are rivalries and jealousies. They disagree among themselves . Some black leaders, such as Malcolm X, are impatient with the older organizations, which try to work peacefully through the courts and churches. And some groups want to fight with fists, weapons, and anger. But not Martin Luther King. He vows, "We are not going to stop until the walls of segregation are crushed. We've gone too far to turn back now."

For years the venerable civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph has talked of a freedom rally in the nation's capital. Perhaps it would bring the diverse black leaders together. Perhaps it would bring black and white people together. Perhaps it would influence Congress. President Kennedy has sent a civil rights bill to Congress. Will it be passed? A march would show Congress and the President the importance of the movement. Exactly one hundred years has passed since Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Some white people are still telling blacks to wait and be patient. Martin Luther King speaks for them all: "We can't wait any longer. Now is the time."

Philip Randolph is seventy-four. If ever he is to have his march, it has to be soon. And so it is decided: on August 28, 1963, there will be a march for freedom in Washington. The marchers are going to demand passage of the civil rights bill; integration of schools by year's end; an end to job discrimination; and a job training program. Two thousand buses head for the capital, and twenty-one chartered trains . One man roller-skates from Chicago. An eighty-two year old man bicycles from Ohio. TV crews guess there are 250,000 people altogether, both black and white—the event is entirely integrated. It is a day filled with song, and hope, and goodwill.

Finally, in the late afternoon, the last of the speakers stands on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It is Martin Luther King, Jr . He begins with a prepared speech. Then something happens. He lets go of using his speech and speaks straight from his heart. Here is what he says: "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed—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. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama with its vicious racists ... little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!...

"And 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 snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that. 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 and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all God'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: 'Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last .' "

Nineteen days later, on September 16, 1963, a bomb explodes during Sunday school at Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Four girls are killed. The quest for American freedom is anything but over.