This paper is an examination of the
history of the African American's American Dream. It looks at the history of independence-minded
thinking in W.E.B. Du Bois and follows through the civil rights
movement with the contrasting style and messages of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. It concludes that the American Dream for the African American has not fundamentally improved over the past one hundred years, and it seems almost more limited now than it was before the civil rights movement.