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Biography of Cole Porter with videos of some of his best songs Part 1

Sinatra: I Concentrate On You rec 1947

Uploaded on Aug 26, 2010

Friendship

Uploaded on Oct 4, 2006

Here are the lyrics:

If your ever in a jam, here I am
If your ever in a mess, SOS
If you ever feel so happy you land in jail, I’m your bail

It’s friendship, friendship
Just a perfect blendship
When other friendships have been forgot, ours will still be hot
Lah-dle, ah-dle, ah-dle, dig, dig, dig

If your ever up a tree, phone to me
If your ever down a well, ring my bell
If you ever lose your teeth and your out to dine, borrow mine

It’s friendship, friendship
Just a perfect blendship
When other friendships have been forgate, ours will still be great
Lah-dle, ah-dle, ah-dle, chuck, chuck ,chuck

If they ever black your eyes, put me wise
If they ever cook your goose, turn me loose
If they ever put a bullet through your brr-ain, I’ll complain

It’s friendship, friendship
Just a perfect blendship
When other friendships have been forgit, ours will still be it
lah-dle, ah-dle, ah-dle, hep, hep, hep

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Cole Porter Biography written by JX Bell

Cole Porter’s name derives from the surnames of his parents, Kate Cole and Sam Porter. Kate’s father, James Omar (known as J. O.), was an influential man both in the community and in Cole’s early life. J.O. started from humble beginnings as son of a shoemaker, but his business savvy and strong work ethic made him the richest man in Indiana. Despite J.O.’s obsessive drive for making money, he took time off to marry Rachel Henton, who had several children with him.

Kate Cole was born in 1862, and was spoiled during her youth as she was throughout her life. Kate always had the best clothes, the best education, and the best training in dancing and music. Kate’s father expected to marry her off to a man with a strong business background, a strong personality, and the potential for a good career. As it is for many filial presumptions and expectations, Kate married someone who was quite the opposite — a shy druggist from their small town of Peru, Indiana.

The couple married without the full consent of J.O., but he financially supported their wedding and subsidized the couple. As one of the richest men in Indiana, he thought his daughter should be seen doing and wearing the right things without financial fears. These subsidies from J.O. financed the rest of Sam and Kate’s life, as well as that of their son born on June 9th, 1891: Cole Porter.

Cole’s Early Years

Cole learned piano and violin at age six. He became very good at both, but he disliked the violin’s harsh sound and so his energy turned to the piano. During his formative years, he played piano two hours per day. While Cole practiced, he and his mother would parody popular tunes on the piano in order to increase Cole’s patience with such long practice sessions.

J.O.

Kate

Cole

Appearing to surpass his peers was easier due to deception on the part of Cole and his mother. When he was fourteen, his mother falsified his school records so it appeared that he was extra bright “for his age” because his age was falsely decremented one year. The power J. O. Cole wielded within the small town of Peru, Indiana allowed Kate many such unusual favors by community officials. For instance, Kate financed student orchestras in exchange for guarantees of Cole Porter violin solos and apparently influenced the media’s reviews or billing surrounding such concerts. She also subsidized the publishing of Cole’s early compositions.

Cole composed songs as early as 1901 (when he was ten) with a song dedicated to his mother, a piano piece called Song of the Birds, separated into six sections with titles like The Young Ones Leaning to Sing and The Cuckoo Tells the Mother Where the Bird Is. His mother ensured that one hundred copies were published so that the song could be sent to friends and relatives.

He enrolled in the Worcester Academy in 1905, where he was lauded as the precocious youngster who became class valedictorian. There Cole met an important influence in his musicianship, Dr. Abercrombie. His teacher taught him about the relationship between words and meter, and between words and music in songs. Cole later quoted from Ambercrombie’s lessons: “Words and music must be so inseparably wedded to each other that they are like one.”

The Yale Years

Cole’s Yale years included many adventures, many musicals, and the forging of relationships that he carried with him for the rest of his life. Most students soon knew him for the fight songs he would write, many of which continue to be Yale classics.

It might be worth noting that it was during the Yale years when Cole’s homosexuality likely became a powerful, if not fully public, part of his life. The Cole Porter biographies I have read do not reveal compelling proof of his gay sex life until after college, so some this may be partially conclusions based on Cole’s well documented gay liaisons soon after college. And perhaps the number of Yale football fight songs he wrote in college and his post-college sexual preference for large strong men were not entirely coincidence.

Perhaps the biggest influences in his musical development were the full scale (for college) productions designed for the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, the Yale Dramatic Association, and solo performances in the Yale Glee Club.

Despite an Ivy League academic workload and social obligations, he composed several full productions per year in addition to individual songs. Most of the shows for the Yale student groups were zany musicals that were always complicated and often rallied around the superiority or sexual (heterosexual, by the way) prowess of Yale men. These shows were primarily intended for a Yale audience, although some of them charged admission when intended for a non-college crowd. Cole did not necessarily contribute to the “book” (the script) of the musicals, but he did have an influence on how the plot was strung together, the high energy, and the witty surreality that marked all of Cole’s musicals.

Cole wrote musicals for clubs and alumni associations, which allowed Cole and his friends to tour the country and be showered with attention and party invitations. Some of these Yale connections were helpful when he started his career on Broadway. The Yale ties lasted beyond his graduation. Even as he was graduating, he was promising more musicals for his student organizations to be written after leaving Yale. He left Yale with a legacy of approximately 300 songs, including six full scale productions.

Cole spent the years immediately after Yale flailing in an unsuccessful Harvard law career. The man who paid all of Cole’s bills, his grandfather J.O. Cole, disapproved of men choosing careers in the arts and tried hard to convince Cole to become a lawyer. Even when Cole was young, J.O. tried to instill a sense of rough individualism and business savvy that was lost on the over-pampered young Porter. Cole did indeed start attending Harvard Law but his primary attention was always to music (including writing musicals for his Yale friends). Although Kate knew, J.O. was not told that in his second year Cole switched from the law school to the school of arts and sciences at Harvard in order to pursue music. Eventually, he abandoned his studies, moved to the Yale club in New York, and began his serious music career.

Career and Travel

His first Broadway show was See America First, which was a 1916 flop despite the social luminaries in the early audiences — a feature of hiring Bessie Marbury as theatrical producer. It was described by the New York American as a “high-class college show played partly by professionals.” Cole later claimed to be in hiding after the failure of the show but he actually was prominent in the New York social scene and continued to live at the Yale Club in New York.

In July of 1917, he set out for Paris and war-engulfed Europe. Paris was a place Cole flourished socially and managed to be in the best of all possible worlds. He lied to the American press about his military involvement and made up stories about working with the French Foreign Legion and the French army. This allowed him to live his days and nights as a wealthy American in Paris, a socialite with climbing status, and still be considered a “war hero” back home, an ‘official’ story he encouraged throughout the rest of his life.

The parties during these years were elaborate and fabulous, involving people of wealthy and political classes. His parties were marked by much gay and bisexual activity, Italian nobility, cross-dressing, international musicians, and a large surplus of recreational drugs.

Cole and Linda

By 1919, Cole was spending time with the American divorcee Linda Thomas. The two became close friends quickly. Their financial status and social standing also made them ideal candidates for marriage — as a business contract, not for passion. The fact that Linda’s ex-husband was abusive and Cole was gay made the arrangement even more palatable. Linda was always one of Cole’s best supporters and being married increased his chance of success, and Cole allowed Linda to keep high social status for the rest of her life. They married on December 19, 1919 and lived a happy friendship, a mostly successful public relationship, but a sexless marriage until Linda’s death in 1954

For those interested in the poets, politicians, patricians, and places Cole knew in the next two decades, they were fairly well documented. See the Cole Wide Web Books page for details.

The Later Years

After early success with one-off songs like Don’t Fence Me In, which was re-released in a World War II musical called Hollywood Canteen, Cole signed some contracts with the film industry. The first film with a Cole Porter song was The Battle of Paris from 1929, but his two tunes from that movie had little impact on his career because of the film wasn’t very good overall.

Cole was happy with many aspects of the Hollywood community, including the liberal gay enclave called the movie industry population. Although there is some dispute about the reasons why Linda did not like the Hollywood home, my research indicates that the primary friction was Cole’s relatively more public sexual escapades. At the time, it was much less acceptable to be an eccentric gay artist and Linda feared for Cole’s reputation and career. And her social standing was threatened by such activities, since it reflected poorly in hushed rumors within upper-crust social circles.

In 1937, Cole was involved in a horse riding accident and fractured both of legs. This was a personal tragedy for a vain man who placed an enormous value on looks for both social and sexual reasons. His vibrant energy and obsession to maintain his looks through elaborate daily rituals could not (in his opinion) compensate for such a debilitating blow at his health and his ego. He was in the hospital for months, but his mental and physical health waned. It got worse with the eventual amputation of one of his legs. This did not stop Cole from writing music. During this period were Cole’s popular songs Most Gentlemen Don’t Like Love, From Now On, and Get Out Of Town.

In 1945, he lent his permission but minimal creative energy to the movie Night and Day, allegedly about the life of Cole Porter. Although great for his ego and likely hysterically funny for his friends, history suffers because this movie had very little relationship to the actual life of Cole Porter. The movie purposely left out important parts of life, like his overly pampered and controlled youth, his gay life, his sexless marriage of convenience, his ‘business’ marriage, and furthered the fantastic tall tales that Cole spread about himself. For instance, although he had never served in the French Army, the movie faithfully “showed” his exploits and his fake war injuries. Cole reportedly enjoyed the movie’s wildly fictional account, and he had the privilege of seeing movie superstar Cary Grant play a well-hyped heroic (and straight) version of himself.

After this point, he had one major production, Kiss Me Kate, which was based on the Shakespeare classic Taming of the Shrew. Cole was very skeptical of this production but eventually lent his hand to the production and it became very successful, eventually spawning a moderately successful movie. Porter produced fewer successful productions in the later days, but Cole wrote songs for the musicals Can Can and Silk Stockings during this period.

Doctors amputated Cole’s injured right leg in 1958. After the amputation, Cole’s creative productivity, his social power, and his happiness plummeted. He died on October 15, 1964. In accordance with his wishes, official reports say that he was buried between his wife Linda and his father Sam Porter. Howver, perhaps because of his father’s trivial role in Cole’s upbringing, other reports circled that he was actually buried between his mother Kate and his wife Linda.

The popularity of his individual songs lasted far beyond the common knowledge of the man himself. Many of his most famous songs were presented to the public only in the context of musicals or movies which contained non-Cole Porter songs. Other famous songs have come from Cole Porter musicals or revues that failed miserably, but made up their exposure via sheet music and recordings from popular singers like Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. For more information about Cole Porter albums, see the CD section of Cole Wide Web. Sometime in the 1990s, ASCAP reported that the sales of the song Night and Day from the musical Gay Divorce were the highest numbers of all time.

A 1990 album brought Cole Porter music to many younger listeners as the fundraising album Red, Hot, and Blue. The album features Cole Porter songs sung by popular musicians of the 1980s and 1990s. Porter songs still maintain a strong presence in movie soundtracks (from Woody Allen Movies, to Tank Girl), with the most popular songs Lets Do It (Let’s Fall In Love) and Night and Day.

The 2004 movie De-Lovely, named after a silly Cole Porter song title, rekindled the nation’s love for Cole Porter’s music due to the beautiful sets, all-star actors, famous musicians, and a well-hyped Hollywood marketing campaign for the movie and the soundtrack.

Let’s hope that we all keep the talent of Cole Porter alive!

For More Information

There are many full biographies of Cole Porter on the Cole Porter Books page.

There are many CDs of Cole Porter music on the Cole Porter CDs page.

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Cole Porter “Let’s Do it, Let’s Fall in Love” in the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

Midnight in Paris – Let’s Do It

Let’s do it : Cole Porter.( Midnight in Paris )

Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love

Cole Porter, composer of Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love

“Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love” (also known as “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love)” or simply “Let’s Do It“) is a popular song written in 1928 by Cole Porter. It was introduced in Porter’s first Broadway success, the musical Paris (1928) by French chanteuse Irène Bordoni for whom Porter had written the musical as a starring vehicle.^[1]

Bordoni’s husband and Paris producer Ray Goetz convinced Porter to give Broadway another try with this show.^[2] The song was later used in the English production of Wake Up and Dream (1929)^[3] and was used as the title theme music in the 1933 Hollywood movie, Grand Slam starring Loretta Young and Paul Lukas. In 1960 it was also included in the film version of Cole Porter’s Can-Can.^[4]

History

The first of Porter’s famous “list songs“, it features a string of suggestive and droll comparisons and examples, preposterous pairings and double-entendres, dropping famous names and events, drawing unexpectedly from highbrow and popular culture. Porter was a strong admirer of the Savoy Operas of Gilbert & Sullivan, many of whose stage works featured similar comic list songs.^[5]

The first refrain covers human ethnic groups, the second refrain birds, the third refrain marine life, the fourth refrain insects (plus centipedes) and the fifth refrain non-human mammals.

One commentator saw the phrase Let’s do “it” as a euphemistic reference to a proposition for a sexual intercourse.^[1] According to this argument, Let’s do it was a pioneer pop song to declare openly “sex is fun”. According to it, several suggestive lines include a couplet from verse 4: “Moths in your rugs do it, What’s the use of moth-balls?” and “Folks in Siam do it, Think of Siamese twins” (verse 1) and “Why ask if shad do it? Waiter, bring me shad roe” (verse 3) and “Sweet guinea-pigs do it, Buy a couple and wait” (verse 5).^[6] There’s also a report that Porter’s original version included the even more risqué line, “Roosters with a doodle and a cock do it”^{[citation needed]}. If true, this was probably replaced by one of the lines in the verse 2 couplet “Penguins in flocks, on the rocks, do it, Even little cuckoos, in their clocks, do it.”

The nature of the song, “Let’s Fall in Love,” is such that it has lent itself over the years to the regular addition of contemporary or topical stanzas. For example, in 1955 the line “Even Liberace, we assume, does it” was added by Noël Coward in his cabaret performance of the song^[7] although Coward’s lyrics were entirely and completely rewritten as a topical piece, with none of Porter’s lyrics remaining.^[8]

Legacy

	“Let’s Do It” Menu 0:00 2011 performance of “Let’s Do It” by Linda November and Artie Schroeck in Nevada
Problems playing this file? See media help.

The song has been revived many times since 1928, although usually with only a limited portion of the original lyrics.^[9] A punk rock version performed by Joan Jett and Paul Westerberg was used as the theme song in the 1995 movie Tank Girl, and later in a more classical version in a musical revue number within the film. In the revue, the song is at first performed by stage actress Ann Magnuson, but is taken over by star Lori Petty after she places duct tape over Magnuson’s mouth. It was originally recorded with Joan Jett and Greg Graffin, but Atlantic Records did not want them using Graffin so they deleted his voice and recorded Westerberg’s. Joan Jett and Greg Graffin’s version of “Let’s Do It” was eventually released in 2000 on the compilation CD Laguna Tunes (Blackheart Records).

The White Stripes‘ song, “Forever For Her (Is Over For Me)” from their 2005 album Get Behind Me Satan borrows lyrics and themes from this song:

“So let’s do it, just get on a plane and just do it // Like the birds and the bees and get to it”

Brazilian singers Chico Buarque and Elza Soares recorded a Portuguese adaptation by Carlos Rennó, “Façamos – Vamos Amar” on Buarque’s 2002 album “Duetos”. It adds even more nations, animals and groups.

The song is featured prominently in Woody Allen‘s 2011 film Midnight in Paris. Actor Yves Heck played Cole Porter in the movie.

Racial lyrics controversy

In Porter’s publication from 1928, the opening line for the chorus carried two non-derogatory racial references: Chinks and Japs.

The original was:^[9]

Chinks do it, Japs do it,
up in Lapland little Laps do it…

The original line can be heard in several early recordings of the song, such as a recording made by Dorsey Brothers & their Orchestra (featuring a vocal by a young Bing Crosby),^[10] Rudy Vallée, both in 1928, and a version of the song by the singer and well-known Broadway star Mary Martin (with Ray Sinatra‘s orchestra), recorded in 1944. Another example is Billie Holiday, in 1941.^[11] Peggy Lee with the Benny Goodman orchestra recorded a version in 1941 with these lyrics (see the CD “The Essential Benny Goodman” published by Columbia/Bluebird/Legacy (88697 09491 2)).

Porter changed the opening to the now famous refrain: “Birds do it, Bees do it” when he realized that the line was offensive.^[12]

Notable recordings

• Dorsey Brothers & their Orchestra (vocal, Bing Crosby) (1928)
• Rudy Vallée and His Connecticut Yankees (1928)
• Mary Martin – Mexican Hayride (1944)
• Eartha Kitt with Henri René and his orchestra. Recorded in New York City on October 5, 1951. It was released by RCA Victor Records as catalog number 20-5737 (in USA)^[13] and by EMI on the His Master’s Voice label as catalog number B 10778. The song was also released on the LP That Bad Eartha (1953)
• Dinah Washington – “In the Land of Hi-Fi” (1956)
• Louis Armstrong – Ella and Louis Again (1957), Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson (1957)
• Al Hirt – The Greatest Horn in the World (1961)^[14]
• Hildegard Knef – Träume heißen Du (“Sei mal verliebt” — German version, 1968)
• Ella Fitzgerald – Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook (1956), The Stockholm Concert, 1966 (1966), Montreux ’75 (1975)
• John Inman – I’m Free (1977)
• Kim Basinger – The Marrying Man (1991)
• Joan Jett and Paul Westerberg of The Replacements recorded a punk version for the soundtrack of Tank Girl
• Susannah McCorkle – Easy to Love—The Songs of Cole Porter (1996)
• Lee Wiley – Hot House Rose (1996), Sings Porter and Gershwin (2004)
• Dee Dee Bridgewater – Dear Ella (1997)
• Frank Sinatra – Frank Sinatra in Hollywood 1940-1964 (2001)

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Related Posts:

I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I have done over 30 posts on the historical characters mentioned in the film. Take a look below:

In 2009 interview Woody Allen talks about the lack of meaning of life and the allure of younger women

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The Inspirations Behind “I Have a Dream”

Vera Chan and Max Zimbert 2 hours ago

Aerial view of the 1963 March on Washington, looking north from the Washington Monument. (Martin S. Trikosko/Library …

On Aug. 28, 1963, a quarter of a million people peaceably gathered at the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Attendant celebrities lent their Hollywood credentials. The media coverage was international. More than 22,000 police officers, guards, soldiers, and paratroopers were placed on alert.

Yet all this has been submerged into the backdrop to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words in “I Have a Dream.” The speech was an afterthought, one that King crafted in the final hours before the momentous convocation, working its rhythms like a poem. It is one of the finest speeches delivered on American soil — the distillation of Old Testament wisdom, Shakespearean drama, the Founding Fathers’ vision, and King’s own sermons and his emergent understanding of what it meant to be free, equal, and American.

With the help of Stanford University’s King Papers Project, the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, and “Voice of Deliverance” author Keith Miller, the following is an examination of key passages in “I Have a Dream” and a look at the historic origins that shaped them.

The “greatest demonstration in history”

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom still ranks as the largest civil rights assembly in the country’s history. Before then, America’s largest demonstration had been in 1925, when an estimated 35,000 Ku Klux Klan members marched down Pennsylvania Avenue. King’s powerful oration was the “first of its kind” broadcast live on all three networks and around the world via the Telstar satellite.

“Five score years ago”: Abraham Lincoln and Psalms

King noted the Emancipation Proclamation’s centennial but referenced the first line — and its ideals — from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” King linked democratic values to biblical imagery of hellfires and then salvation, notably Psalms 30:5: “For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

The “chains of discrimination”: Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, John Donne, and Exodus

This passage packs in several key literary influences. Abolitionists long evoked the images of chains to depict slavery’s dehumanizing nature. Frederick Douglass did so in his oft-repeated historic speech “The Meaning of of July Fourth for the Negro.” King’s link to Douglass is even more fundamental, points out Arizona State University English professor Keith Miller, author of “Voices of Deliverance.” Douglass “basically uses the Bible and the Declaration of Independence to indict slavery.” Other speakers who linked the Bible with America’s founding documents included journalist and suffragist Ida B. Wells, who also alluded to the lyrics of the patriotic song “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” (“America”).

King, who wrote of the “paralyzing chains of conformity” in his pivotal “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” also referred to “twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty” in that letter. In this speech, though, the single man on the “lonely island of poverty” harks back to John Donne’s renowned poem, “No Man Is An Island.”

The notion of the exile points to Exodus — when the Jews lived in exile — and an allegory that King evokes throughout “I Have a Dream.”

To “cash a check”: The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and Clarence B. Jones

Besides the two documents that laid out America’s foundation, this passage includes a more contemporary metaphor about check-cashing and a promissory note. This decidedly mundane metaphor was suggested by his counsel and speechwriter, Clarence B. Jones. The religious link, however, reinforces the principles of equality not just as a contract but, as many scholars point out, as a covenant — a moral right, as much as a civil one.

The “Negro’s legitimate discontent”: Shakespeare, Gospel, and blunt words

“Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York.” The homage to William Shakespeare’s play “Richard III” is clear. Scholars have dug for more comparisons — the troubled relationship between brothers Richard and Edward is echoed in the troubled relationships between black and white brothers.

In the midst of Shakespearean allusions and Gospel-tinged language (“whirlwinds of revolt”), King plunks a cliché-laden sentence smack in the middle (“blow off steam,” “rude awakening,” “business as usual”). It’s as though he has stepped off the trail to the mountaintop for a moment for some blunt talk.

“[U]ntil justice rolls down like water”: Old Testament prophets

The audience of 1963 would have been far more versed in the Bible then today’s secular audiences.  The next few passages dip heavily into the Old Testament, from Jeremiah to Amos. King’s talk about suffering finally gets to a New Testament reference, one he touched on his 1959 sermon “Unfulfilled Hopes” on the Apostle Paul. And in his repeated urgings to “go back” lay the sorrowful hope of Exodus — the dream of home.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident”: Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson wrote those key words in the Declaration of Independence, which King cited here. Of course, Jefferson was an active slave owner. But here, King is following the precedent that Abraham Lincoln established with the Gettysburg Address: He extended the Declaration and transformed it into an accountability doctrine to amend the Constitution.

The Constitution permitted slavery and the slave trade. There’s nothing explicit about privacy, sexual orientation, nor racial equality. The Constitution even rewarded the South’s political power by counting slaves as a fraction of one person, which greased census numbers.

“[It] had no legal power as a source to justify the moral imperative of blocking the expansion of slavery, and later, for emancipation,” said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA.

“I have a dream”: Sermon on the Mount and the Declaration of Independence

King told an interviewer that he ad-libbed the speech’s most famous repetition.

“I started out reading the speech, and I read it down to a point…the audience response was wonderful that day … And all of a sudden this thing came to me that … I’d used many times before … ‘I have a dream.’ And I just felt that I wanted to use it here … I used it, and at that point I just turned aside from the manuscript altogether. I didn’t come back to it.”

Of course, by the time King turned away from his scripted speech, he had spoken about this dream many times before. History professor Clayborne Carson, who oversees Stanford’s collection of King’s papers, said the phrase riffs on the song “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” (“America”), a device that other speakers (see above) used, as did King’s family friend Archibald Carey. The Chicago lawyer, minister, and diplomat also referenced the lyrics while speaking in support of Dwight Eisenhower at the 1952 Republican Convention.

It is the emphasis on basic and universal appeals that makes the speech so memorable. Historians say that had King spoken of specifics — the March on Washington had been a rally for jobs and freedom, focusing on wages, among other issues — historical memory would be different.

“It’s about a direction, but it doesn’t have the same specific bite that some of his other speeches have, which makes it a lot more acceptable for a lot of people who don’t want to do anything specific or feel like we’ve already done it,” Orfield said.

The “dream” moves the speech’s movement from fiery Old Testament prophets to the New Testament. Its repetition echoes the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus instructs his followers: Blessed are those who hunger and search after justice; blessed are those who suffer persecution for justice’s sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Let freedom ring”: Samuel Francis Smith’s “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” (“America”)

These words have their origins in Samuel Francis Smith’s “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”

Freedom is “probably the most fundamental American value,” Orfield said. “Even as the opponents of civil rights were fighting for ‘freedom’ from government, King wanted Americans to understand that government had to act and that civil rights law and the social and cultural changes that would come with it would bring a great expansion of freedom.”

King’s geographic references, such as the mention of Stone Mountain in Georgia, were intended to take topological high ground away from resurgent antagonists, such as the KKK.

“Free at last, free at last:” Negro spirituals and the Book of Exodus

Some of King’s thinking can be traced back to the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament. King sometimes began his Sunday sermons reading from the book. Listeners recognized the symbolism in Pharaoh, hardship going through Egypt, and the arrival at the Promised Land.

“It’s very congruent with King’s speeches,” he said. “When you were listening to Dr. King, you would hear about how we were making the path to freedom and we’re going to take down the walls of Jericho. All of this had an incredibly powerful resonance in the black churches where he was organizing people, where it was in their hearts and their souls and it became redemptive politically.”

King’s speech had a powerful inflection point at its end. After his martyrdom, King became associated with street names, public schools and more widespread honors. Lost amid the celebrations, Orfield said, was the recognition, which King held, that the work is never finished.

“The arc [of history] doesn’t bend automatically toward justice,” he said. “Plessy v. Ferguson was the law of the land for 60 years. It took a long struggle to get to Brown v. Board of Education. Every generation has to win its own rights. Anyone who thinks it ends with a big speech 50 years ago is saying something Dr. King would’ve never believed for a second.”

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