This article is brought to you by American Purpose, the magazine and community founded by Francis Fukuyama in 2020, which is proudly part of the Persuasion family.
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which → bring → family
The spot at the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered “I Have a Dream” is easy to step over without noticing.
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I → deliver → Dream
The engraved inscription is nearly invisible in the granite, beneath the giant, looming statue of Abraham Lincoln.
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inscription → loom → Lincoln
But it marks the place where King stood on August 28, 1963—63 years ago today—and spoke one of the last pieces of moral language Americans across the political spectrum can still quote without irony.
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Americans → mark → irony
That marker was installed in 2003 with broad bipartisan support and spearheaded by a Republican congresswoman from Kentucky, Rep. Anne Northup, whose constituent wrote to her noting the absence of any indicator of hallowed ground.
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constituent → instal → ground
Today, there is a private effort to make the marker more visible in time for the 65th anniversary of the speech in 2028.
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marker → be → 2028
This sounds like the kind of everyday campaign no one could reasonably oppose—perhaps brass footprints on the step, a resonant visual to evoke public memory.
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one → sound → memory
But shared memory is more complicated in America than it used to be—for both good reasons and bad.
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it → share → reasons
We invite many more perspectives into our national story than in the past, which is good.
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which → invite → past
Institutions are also frequently mistaking the loudest voices as public consensus, which is not.
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which → mistake → consensus
In recent years, we have seen statues toppled and names removed from buildings.
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names → see → buildings
Our founders are being reassessed in parks and museums across the country.
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founders → reassess → country
While activists on the left treat the past like a crime scene, some on the right treat any widening of the historical lens as a betrayal of America.
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some → treat → America
Caught in the fray, our institutions have grown skittish, citizens suspicious of each other’s motives, and the act of honoring anyone has begun to feel less like gratitude than divorce proceedings.
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act → catch → proceedings
Which raises the question that the granite step may soon force on us: When we mark the place where King spoke, what exactly are we honoring?
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we → raise → what
The flesh and blood man who left a family behind when he was assassinated?
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he → leave → family
The greater movement he symbolized?
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he → symbolize → ?
The dream he projected?
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he → project → ?
America’s aspiration to become what the speech demanded?
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speech → become → what
The question of the step’s meaning is about to become less theoretical.
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question → become → meaning
In January 2027, the court seal on King’s still-sealed FBI surveillance recordings and transcripts will expire.
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seal → seal → recordings
While a large cache of FBI and other agency documents relating to King’s assassination were made public on July 21, 2025, the FBI’s electronic surveillance recordings of King, along with related transcripts and logs, were not.
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recordings → relate → transcripts
These particular materials were gathered as part of one of the ugliest campaigns of state surveillance and harassment in modern American history.
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materials → gather → history
J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI wiretapped King, bugged his hotel rooms, spread allegations about his private life, and sent him an anonymous threat to reveal what they knew in an attempt to push him to suicide.
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they → wiretappe → suicide
The allegations described in Pulitzer Prize-winning King biographer David Garrow’s 2019 Standpoint article—mostly of libertine sexual activities but also of King’s entanglements with Communist Party members—are grave, lurid, and, crucially, based on evidence not yet fully reviewable by the public.
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allegations → describe → public
Garrow’s telling draws from then-newly available Bureau summaries of still-sealed recordings, related investigative material, and a 1977 Justice Department review that found the FBI transcripts it examined to be accurate.
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it → draw → recordings
Garrow writes these materials “slipped into public view on the [National] Archives’ lightly annotated and difficult-to-explore web site,” due to the provisions of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.
The original FBI tapes and documents still under seal were created between 1963 and 1968.
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tapes → write → 1963
They were ordered into the custody of the National Archives after litigation brought by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and King aide Bernard Lee, and sealed in 1977 for fifty years.
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They → order → years
In 2025, the government tried to bring them into the declassification process early, arguing they were relevant to President Trump’s order to fully disclose files related to the assassinations of King, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy.
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they → try → King
The SCLC and King family have objected, arguing that records born of illegal surveillance should not be rushed into public view as spectacle and should, in fact, be destroyed.
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records → object → fact
A federal judge ultimately declined to lift the seal ahead of its January 31, 2027 expiration.
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judge → decline → expiration
As Garrow notes, neither he nor the public has heard the original tapes or seen the full transcripts.
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he → note → transcripts
The most explosive claim—that King was present during an alleged rape perpetrated by a friend, and reacted with laughter while offering advice—appears, according to Garrow, as a handwritten annotation on an FBI document.
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King → perpetrate → document
Until the underlying recordings and full transcripts can be independently examined, the accuracy of the allegations is impossible to judge.
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accuracy → underlie → allegations
So today they sit like Schrödinger’s cat, both alive and dead, subject to a morbid anticipation of what will be revealed once they are opened to public view.
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they → sit → view
To be sure, it remains entirely possible that, once the recordings are no longer under court seal, the allegations related to the rape will not be supported.
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allegations → remain → rape
The FBI report and handwritten note will remain in the record.
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report → remain → record
Some will shout “coverup,” and enough will believe them to disrupt a legacy as the attempt to augment the Lincoln Memorial marker stirs the waters and asks for votes from the glorified group of social media trolls that Congress has become.
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Congress → shout → trolls
In 2019, Garrow wrote that “Some of us now ageing King scholars ‘may not get there with you’ come 2027, but there is no question that a profoundly painful historical reckoning and reconsideration inescapably awaits.”
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reckoning → write → you
They are power struggles over what stories we will allow one another to tell about ourselves and our culture—about our past as it implicates our present and future.
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it → allow → present
…and 65 more, not listed.
