In this Aug. 28, 1963, photo Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addresses marchers during his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. (AP)

Great moments in history colliding in Washington this week, echoing off each other, across the years.

On the mall yesterday, a huge crowd before the Lincoln Memorial, opening the celebration of Barack Obama’s inauguration, on the same site where Martin Luther King gave his historic “I Have a Dream” speech in August, 1963.

A new telling of the origins of that speech calls it “national scripture”. But it was not the speech King had prepared. This hour, On Point: the untold story of the “I Have a Dream” speech, and its monumental echo in the nation’s capitol this week.

You can join the conversation. On this Martin Luther King Day, is this the dream, part of it, coming true?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Mike Allen, chief political correspondent for Politico.com.

Eric Sundquist, professor of literature, University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of “To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature.” His new book is “King’s Dream.”

You can read the introduction to “King’s Dream.”

Rev. Dr. Howard-John Wesley, pastor of the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, VA. He is a fourth generation Baptist preacher.

More links:

The full text of the speech is available here.  You can watch it on YouTube below:

Martin Luther King Day has a little more heat on it this year than some. From the cauldron of presidential politics has spun the question: who mattered more in the earth-moving civil rights revolution of the 1960’s — Martin Luther King, or Lyndon Baines Johnson?

The preacher or the president? Crazy question, say those who were there. But what an unlikely, high-voltage, interlocking duo this was.

Today we look and listen back on their astounding, high-wire relationship. It still sounds hot.

This hour, On Point: MLK, LBJ, and the civil rights revolution.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Nick Kotz, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of “Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws That Changed America.”

Roger Wilkins, professor of history and American culture at George Mason University, he served as assistant attorney general in the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. He shared the Pulitzer Prize for Watergate coverage in 1972 as a member of the Washington Post editorial page staff.