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Jazz great Thurl Bailey recalls parents attending Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech

SALT LAKE CITY — Carl and Retha Bailey needed a babysitter to watch their children.

No, the Baileys weren’t going out for a drink or to dance, they were going to witness one of the world’s most prominent civil rights leaders, Martin Luther King, Jr., deliver his most iconic speech.

On Aug. 28, 1963, Carl and Retha stood among a crowd of nearly 250,000 folks in Washington, D.C., near the Washington Monument to hear King’s famed “I Have a Dream” speech.

Just a 2-year-old at the time, Utah Jazz great Thurl Bailey was one of the children being babysat in a suburb of D.