MLK Jr. Day - The March in Washington to Cash Lincoln's Check Written During the Civil War

Today, we honor and remember the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. This federal holiday, signed into law in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan, is dedicated to promoting equality, justice, and service, reflecting King's legacy and his noteworthy contributions to the civil rights movement and his advocacy for racial equality.

The Lincoln Center would like to share a wonderful, short essay, "A March in Washington in 1963 to Cash a Check Written During the Civil War," written by historian and educator Kevin M. Levin on his substack.

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Though not widely appreciated as such, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech is deeply connected to the legacy of the American Civil War. That connection becomes even more meaningful when viewed in the context of the Civil War Centennial (1961–1965).

Delivered on August 28, 1963 in Washington, D.C.—exactly one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation—King’s speech challenged the nation to reflect on whether the promises born out of the Civil War had truly been fulfilled. While much of the country commemorated the war with battlefield reenactments and other ceremonies that attracted large white audiences, King used the centennial moment to argue that its most important goal, genuine freedom and equality, remained unfinished.

King opened his speech with a clear reference to both the Civil War and its centennial timing, stating, “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.” The phrase “five score years ago” deliberately echoes Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and emphasizes that a full century had passed since emancipation.

During the Civil War Centennial, many white Americans celebrated the preservation of the Union and military bravery of the soldiers on both sides. At the same time, they largely ignored the tough questions of race and chattel slavery, but King redirected attention to the war’s moral purpose: ending slavery. By doing so, he reframed the centennial as a moment of accountability rather than simple celebration.

King underscored the failure of the nation to live up to the promises of the Civil War by declaring, “One hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.” This line directly linked the centennial to the ongoing civil rights struggle. While the country marked one hundred years since emancipation, African Americans were still facing segregation, voter suppression, violence and economic inequality. King’s words exposed the contradiction between commemorating freedom and denying it in practice, suggesting that the centennial rung hollow without justice.

The setting of the speech at the Lincoln Memorial further strengthened this connection. Lincoln was central to centennial remembrance even if his role in ending slavery was rarely referenced. In contrast, King called the Emancipation Proclamation “a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves,” but he also implied that this beacon had dimmed over time.

Speaking from the Lincoln Memorial during the centennial era, King symbolically placed the civil rights movement as the rightful continuation of Lincoln’s “unfinished work” and reinforced the idea that the struggle for equality was part of the same historical arc as the Civil War.

King also leveraged the centennial moment to criticize the nation for breaking the promises that followed the war. Through his famous metaphor, he explained, “In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check,” referring to the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and reinforced by the Civil War amendments ratified during Reconstruction. Instead, African Americans were given “a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’” This metaphor suggests that the outcomes of the Civil War—freedom, citizenship, and equality—were pledged but never fully delivered, even after a century had passed.

The connections that King made to the Civil War’s “emancipationist” legacy would have clearly resonated with the African Americans in attendance that day in the nation’s capital. African Americans continued to pass down stories of freedom and Black military service in the United States Army as a rightful claim to citizenship and as a bulwark against the Lost Cause, national reunion, and Jim Crow.

By connecting the civil rights movement to the Civil War Centennial, King transformed a historical commemoration into a moral challenge. His speech insisted that remembering the Civil War is meaningless unless the nation completes the work it began. In “I Have a Dream” speech, the centennial is not just a marker of time, but a reminder that history demands action. King insisted that the true way to honor the Civil War is not through monuments or anniversaries, but through justice, equality, and the fulfillment of freedom for all Americans.

On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, just days after announcing that he would support limited voting rights for African Americans. Almost to the day one hundred and fifty-three years later, on April 3, Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down for attempting to turn his “dream” into a reality.