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Martin Luther King Jr.
On August 28, 1963, about 250,000 people listened as Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. King said he dreamed of a nation in which everyone lived by the words of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
King delivered his now-famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. This year marks the 15th anniversary of another memorial, only a short distance away. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial opened to the public in 2011.
Today about 3 million people visit the memorial each year. It features a 450-foot-long stone wall with 14 famous quotes by King. At the center of the memorial is a 30-foot-tall sculpture of King called the Stone of Hope.