The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech was delivered before an audience of 250,000 at the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial in the nation’s capital. It was the largest crowd in the history of the capital at that time. Dr. King’s speech impressed on the crowd and the government that the plight of African Americans was in dire straits 100 years after slavery ended when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and worked with Congress to pass the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865. He referred to the Declaration of Independence, which states that we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.