Editor's note: Chris Hawke is a graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and a journalist who has reported for over two decades from Beijing, New York, the United Nations, Tokyo, Bangkok, Islamabad and Kabul for AP, UPI and CBS. The article reflects the author's views, and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Fifty-seven years ago, Martin Luther King Jr delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of 250,000 people gathered for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Reading its text brings tears to my eyes, both for the beauty of the vision it lays out, and the pain of his dream deferred.

The speech was widely praised, and contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

In response to King's speech, William Sullivan, head of the FBI's domestic intelligence division at the time, wrote a memo entitled "Communist Party, USA, Negro Question."

Sullivan wrote, "Personally, I believe in the light of King's powerful, demagogic speech" that "he stands head and shoulders over all other Negro leaders put together when it comes to influencing great masses."

"We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security," he concluded.

The FBI launched "a secret effort to discredit Dr. King and to 'neutralize' him as the leader of the civil rights movement," according the 1976 U.S. Senate Church Committee report.

This began an intensive period of wiretaps and surveillance, including bugging hotels where King stayed.

In 1964, the FBI sent King's wife an audiotape with purported sexual indiscretions and a note that apparently urged King to commit suicide or resign from his leadership position.

In King's final years, he challenged the U.S. war in Vietnam and fought for economic equality. In 1967, he said, "We aren't merely struggling to integrate a lunch counter now. We're struggling to get some money to be able to buy a hamburger or a steak when we get to the counter."

In his final years, he identified as a democratic socialist and advocated policies that are becoming mainstream, such as a universal basic income. In the weeks before his death, King was involved in planning a Poor People's March on Washington.

He was assassinated in 1968. His family and others believe he was killed as part of a government plot.

King is now considered a national hero in the United States, and there is a national holiday named for him. However, at the time of his death, King was widely disliked.

He was considered to be a radical leftist, an agitator, and a troublemaker – the same kind of language used today by President Donald Trump and other Republicans when describing Black Lives Matter protesters.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Friday, the anniversary of King's speech, for the Get Your Knee Off Our Necks march.

Barely as tall as the lectern, King's 12-year-old granddaughter Yolanda Renee King took the stage and said, "Less than a year before he was assassinated, my grandfather predicted this very movement. He said that we were moving into a new phase of the struggle: the first phase was civil rights, and the new phase is genuine equality. Genuine equality is why we are here today."

Yolanda's father, Martin Luther King III, spoke after his daughter. Referring to his father's famous speech, he said, "We must never forget the American nightmare."

He continued, "There's a knee upon the neck of our democracy, and our nation can only live so long without the oxygen of freedom."

A string of relatives of Black people killed by police went on stage, so many that not all had a chance to speak.

Although Friday's demonstration was small in scale compared to the 1963 March on Washington, this summer's Black Lives Matter movement it represents is the largest the United States has ever seen, according to the New York Times, with tens of millions demonstrating across the country.

An unending stream of police violence caught on video keeps the movement energized. Most recently, Jacob Blake of Kenosha, Wisconsin, was shot four times in the back by a policeman as he was entering his car, with his three children in the back seat.

This dark summer has taken a more ominous turn. Black Lives Matters protesters and Trump supporters have started killing each other.

On Tuesday, during the demonstrations following Blake's shooting, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, a police supporter who had traveled from out of state, allegedly shot and killed two Black Lives Matter protesters, marking a dangerous escalation.

On Saturday night in Portland, Oregon, a man wearing a hat from a far-right group was shot and killed amid scuffles between Black Lives Matter and pro-Trump protesters.

Trump and his supporters like to paint the Black Lives Matter protesters, and the vandalism, rioting and arson that has sometimes accompanied them, as a threat to America.

King, in the year before he was assassinated, had this to say about Black rioting.

"I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard."

Although King's 1963 speech is remembered for its uplifting tone, it contained what sounds like prophesy: "It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment." He continued, "The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges."

This autumn, America is finding out what happens to King's dream of justice, deferred.

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