 One well-known example is the identification by Martin Luther King, Jr. of his own race as "Negro" in his famous "I Have a Dream" speech of 1963.However, during the 1950s and 1960s, some black American leaders, notably Malcolm X, objected to the word "Negro" because they associated it with the long history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination that treated African Americans as second class citizens, or worse.Malcolm X preferred "Black" to "Negro", but also started using the term "Afro-American" after leaving the Nation of Islam.