Rita Moreno reveals she was in the crowd during MLK Jr.’s 1963 ‘I Have a Dream’ speech

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Rita Moreno recently received the Stanley Kramer Award during the 33rd Producers Guild of America Awards. According to the trade association representing television producers, film producers, and New Media producers in the United States, the Stanley Kramer Award “honors a production, producer, or other individuals whose achievement or contribution illuminates and raises public awareness of important social issues.” During Moreno’s acceptance speech, the 90-year-old EGOT winner recalled the time she witnessed live when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington. Moreno said Harry Belafonte invited her.“I am not a person of religious faith, but for me, film has often been a sacred text that has spurred me to follow what [Abraham Lincoln] called, the better angels of our nature,” she began her acceptance speech.“In 1963, as I sat on Abraham Lincoln’s steps, only a few feet from Dr.

King. I was there. I was there,” Moreno recounted. “I heard his best friend who was sitting next to him, Mahalia Jackson, cry out to him — this is the truth — ‘Tell them about the dream, Martin.

Tell them about the dream.’ Because he had started a different speech, and she wanted people to hear about the dream. And thanks to an invitation from Harry Belafonte, I was there to hear the preacher’s dream.”Known as the first Latina actress to win an Oscar, and to date, the only one with an Academy Award, the 1961’s West Side Story star recognized filmmakers who “keep on preaching and never stop advocating for matters of equity and justice.” “It is so meaningful to me and so gratifying to receive this extraordinary recognition and to be associated with his legacy,” she said. “I am 90 now, and.