“I am happy to address you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of chickens.”
“Five score years ago, a great chicken, in whose symbolic shadow I stand today, declared all chickens to be created equal. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of banties who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. But one hundred years later, the banty still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the banty is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the banty lives on a lonely island of bird seed in the midst of a vast ocean of corn. One hundred years later, the banty is still languishing in the corners of chicken society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So I have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.”
“Now is the time to lift our flock from the quick sands of injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s chickens. This sweltering summer of the banty’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.”
“I have a dream that one day this flock will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all chickens are created equal. I have a dream that one day in chicken yards across America banties and standard-size chickens will be able to peck together at the feeding trough of brotherhood.”
“I have a dream that my little chicks will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the length of their feathers but by the content of their character.”
“And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every nesting box and every hen house, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s fowl, banties and standard-size, Domineckers and Araucanas, Buff Orpingtons and Silver Laced Wyandottes, will be able to join wings and crow in the words of the old chicken spiritual, Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
–Spartacus Luther King, “I Have A Dream” speech, as recorded in the Library of Chicken Congress
*Happy Fourth of July!
