Students from Washington, D.C.’s Watkins Elementary School honored Martin Luther King Jr. on Friday, with about 100 fifth graders reciting the “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial — the spot where King first delivered it on Aug. 28, 1963.
Parents, classmates and bystanders — fewer in number than King’s audience of thousands, but no less enthusiastic — watched as each student approached a podium to deliver the speech line-by-line. They concluded the program with the hymn “We Shall Overcome,” an anthem of the civil rights movement.
This is the eleventh year students have read the speech to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. King’s birthday, Jan. 15, is celebrated on the third Monday in January. He would have turned 86 this year.
