Dream Speech

ATLANTA -- Reversing a lower court's decision, a federal appellate court has revived a lawsuit by heirs of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who claim CBS violated copyright laws by broadcasting portions of his "I Have a Dream" speech without permission.In July 1998, a federal judge here ruled that King's famous 1963 speech, delivered on the Mall in Washington before about 200,000 people and a throng of reporters, was, in essence, public property. U.S. District Judge William O'Kelley dismissed the King estate's case in response to CBS' request for summary judgment.

BOSTON -- At first it sounds like a question for a panel of philosophers: Who owns a dream? What happens when a vision that's formed in the words of one person is released like a balloon into the air to be shared with everyone? Whose property is it then?The dream in this case was described by Martin Luther King Jr. Standing before a crowd of 200,000 at the Lincoln Memorial on that August day in 1963, he found the language to match the moment. "I Have a Dream," he told the country in a speech that became a part of our collective eloquence, as much a part of our heritage as the Gettysburg Address.

AS we mark Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday today, and through the federal holiday Monday, the nation once again will be bombarded with repeated broadcasts of his ''I Have a Dream'' speech, which he delivered Aug. 28, 1963, during the famous March on Washington.But the replaying of that speech to the exclusion of others, in effect, freezes King at that historical moment, making him into what distinguished black historian Vincent Harding calls a ''harmless icon,'' a ''convenient hero'' tailored to fit the comfort zone of mainstream America.

WASHINGTON -- Call it Bill Clinton's dream speech.In his second inaugural address, the president sketched a gauzy picture of America on the cusp of a bright new future. It was a utopian vision of a 21st-century society where poverty and ignorance disappear, the forces of science and virtue triumph, and harried parents have more time to play with their children."We shall overcome them," Clinton said of the evils of racial prejudice and hate, echoing the refrain of the civil rights movement on the birthday holiday for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.Gazing down the Mall to the spot where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech 34 years ago, Clinton paid tribute to the slain civil rights leader and his ideal of racial harmony.

ATLANTA -- The resemblance is most pronounced when he is at rest. Leaning back in his leather chair, his head cocked to one side as he listens quietly, Dexter King, the youngest son of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., suddenly becomes the spitting image of his father.It takes only a gesture and a few words in his rumbling voice, and it is as if a piece of old film has sprung to life, and in color.The elder King, after all, was 34 -- his son's age -- when he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech . By then he had already led the Montgomery bus boycott that thrust him into prominence, had already helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and served as its president . The next year, 1964, he would win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Speakers at Martin Luther King Jr. celebrations like to remind listeners that the slain civil rights leader's legacy belongs to all Americans.But Dr. King's heirs have increasingly issued another reminder: In a legal sense at least, that legacy belongs to them.Consider:* After USA Today published the full text of Dr. King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech -- oratory that has become part of the fabric of American history -- the King estate sued the newspaper last month for copyright infringement.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963, not 1968 as stated in a Page 1A cutline in The Evening Sun yesterday.The Baltimore Sun regrets the error.

Two hundred of the city's fifth-grade students used the power of the pen, paint and magic markers to illustrate their depictions of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of racial unity.The 12 winning students -- a racially and ethnically mixed group of African-Americans, an Indian and whites, one a Bulgarian -- presented their posters and read their essays yesterday at the 10th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Poster and Essay Awards Ceremony at Harford Heights Elementary School.Third-place poster winner James Hicks, of Harford Heights Elementary, used paint and magic markers to recapture Dr. King standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial giving his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech.

Every year, millions of Americans pay tribute to the memory of Martin Luther King. We often forget, however, that King was the object of derision when he was alive. At key moments in his quest for civil rights and world peace, the corporate media treated King with hostility. His march for open housing in Chicago, when the civil-rights movement entered the North, caused a negative, you've-gone-too-far reaction in the Northern press. And King's stand on peace and international law, especially his support for the self-determination of Third World peoples, caused an outcry and backlash in the predominantly white press.