Historian William P. Jones and author Gary Younge spoke on Democracy Now! about the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have a Dream” speech, and why Younge argues the speech has been used to whitewash contemporary race relations in the United States. Younge's new book is “The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream.” You can read his article in The Nation, The Misremembering of ‘I Have a Dream’ Fifty years after the March on Washington, Dr. King’s most famous speech, like his own political legacy, is widely misunderstood. Below you can read the preface to Jones’ new book as well.

Excerpted from The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights by William P. Jones. Copyright © 2013 by William P. Jones. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

March on Washington Preface