Newspaper Dragged For Printing MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech, But Omitting Key Phrases on Police Brutality, Poverty

A newspaper based in Maine drew considerable online scrutiny after readers learned that they reprinted Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech, but only after cutting out large portions that dealt with some of the most crucial subjects from the address.

Like other news outlets have done before, the Bangor Daily News chose to commemorate MLK day by revisiting what was possibly King’s most famous speech as leader of the Civil Rights Movement. However, the transcript that Bangor Daily News posted was far from complete.

The version of the speech that the paper released on Sunday skipped over massive sections of King’s remarks when he called for an end to racial discrimination, and demanded equal rights and economic opportunity for all Americans. Nonetheless, the BDN Editorial Board published their abridged copy with the note, “As we mark the 94th birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., we should take a step away from our divisive politics and recall his defining speech delivered in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 1963.”

In BDN’s version, here’s one section of what they posted from King’s speech:

But one hundred years years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination…

Now here’s what the paragraph looks like in full, including the part where King spoke of how part of the oppression of Black people lies in how they’ve been kept in the grip of poverty.

But one hundred years years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. 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.

The BDN transcript goes on to skip multiple paragraphs, including the parts where King argued that America’s founding documents promised civil and economic rights to all future generations, and the country must actively seek to end racial injustice.

Here’s a portion that BDN left out where King described African Americans being victimized by police brutality and segregation:

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.

We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: for whites only.

We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

This and other fragmented portions of the speech came to the attention of news watchers, many of whom were far from impressed by BDN’s incomplete version.

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