I Have A Dream Speech In Depth Analysis PDF

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I Have A Dream Speech In Depth Analysis...

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I Have A Dream Speech In Depth Analysis

Overview Summary: “I Have a Dream” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream'' speech is one of the most celebrated oratory pieces in American history. King delivered the speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963 as the final speech of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Ruston organized the march to advocate for civil and economic rights for Black Americans, which was among the largest political rallies for human rights in history, attracting approximately 250,000 attendants. Following the speech, King was named Time magazine’s 1963 Man of the Year. A recording of “I Have a Dream” has been added to the United States National Recording Registry, and a line from the speech—“Out of a mountain of despair, a stone of hope”—is the inscription on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington D.C. King opens by stating he is happy to join the audience in a demonstration of freedom. Standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, King notes the Emancipation Proclamation was signed 100 years ago but today, Black people are still not truly free as they lack the same material benefits afforded other Americans. The march is designed to draw attention to that fact. The marchers are there to redeem a promise, to “cash a check” written to Black people by the US government and the Founding Fathers who promised all men were created equal in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. “All men” includes African Americans, yet America failed to deliver on its promise. Instead, it has passed a check that cannot be cashed by Black people. King and the marchers, however, refuse to accept that condition and demand the rights promised them. The marchers are also there to remind the nation that the present is the time to act. Americans should not fall for the trap of making slow and steady progress. Instead, America must today fulfill the full promise of democracy and racial justice. The summer has been one of discontent, but 1963 is a beginning—not an end. The road ahead will lead to an autumn marked with equality for all people so long as the summer’s protests do not result in a return to the complacency of years past. King interrupts to warn the audience that the road to freedom must not be laid by bitterness

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hatred, or bad behavior—especially violence. Instead, those seeking freedom must hold themselves to a higher moral standard and meet acts of violence with acts of love and faith. It is a good thing Black people are now militant about their freedoms, but they must recognize that there are White people in the crowd who have joined the march and who see their struggle for freedom linked to that of Black Americans. Black people must walk with White people as no one can march alone. As they march, all must promise to continue marching forward. Many will ask if the marchers will ever be satisfied. The answer is no: They will not be satisfied as long as Black men are victims of police violence, segregation endures, Black people have no upward economic mobility and are disenfranchised. The marchers will not be satisfied until justice and righteousness pour through the nation. King turns from the general group (who he has been referring to as “we”) to individual groups (who he refers to as “some of you”). Some present have come from worse struggles than others, some from jails, some from areas in which they have suffered police violence and persecution. But to each of them, King asks them to continue to creatively suffer but to ensure the suffering begets change. He asks them to take that faith back to their home states. He returns to the group as a whole announcing he still has a dream about the nation. His dream is that America will finally live up to the words of the Founders: “that all men are created equal.” He also dreams White people and Black people will be able to sit down together as equals and Mississippi will be turned from a hotbed of injustice to a land of freedom. He dreams that in the future, people will not be judged by the color of their skin but by who they are as individuals, and that Alabama will be a place where White and Black children can join hands together. With this dream, King will return to the South. And with this dream and this faith, everyone present can transform the nation into one of brotherhood—as long as everyone works together. One day American children will be able to sing “America (My Country ‘Tis of Thee)” with new meaning, for its lyrics will actually reflect the truth. As a prerequisite for America to become a great nation, freedom must ring across all the majestic landscapes of the United States from New Hampshire to California to Colorado to Tennessee and everywhere in between. And when that happens, “all of God’s children” of all races and faiths will be able to sing the old African American spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

5 This study guide refers to the transcript published by NPR.

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Essay Analysis Analysis: “I Have a Dream” Dr. King’s speech is in the style of a sermon which, like many sermons, connects the past and present to tell a moral story. While King makes repeated reference to spiritual elements and “God’s children,” the speech’s rhythm, pacing, and cadence (especially the way King delivered it, which the transcript of the speech cannot capture) are all lifted from the Baptist sermons King watched his father deliver and he, too, delivered as a reverend. Like other sermons, King’s speech uses inclusive pronouns (“we” and “our”) to connect the audience and the speaker; it also employs repetition of key words and phrases and, especially, call and response. The audience’s responses are not included in the transcript of the text, but the repetition is. King provides lists of injustices in identical syntax and repeats this tactic again later when listing locations to celebrate. He also uses full phrases—not just singular words— in repetition. For example, he uses the phrase “I have a dream” at the start of eight separate sentences. This repetition comes straight from the church tradition. Structurally, the speech, though relatively short, has three parts. In the first, King provides the reason for giving the speech—the March on Washington and the ongoing civil rights movement. In the second, King provides a list of grievances about the past and the present. And in the third, he lists his vision for the future, ending the speech on a high note of optimism. To get there, he makes biblical references and allusions to both history and the patriotic song “America (My Country ‘Tis of Thee),” while also referencing Black spiritual songs. The opening lines of the speech recall Abraham Lincoln’s famous “Gettysburg Address.” King refers to the date of the Emancipation Proclamation, signed by Lincoln, as “five score years ago” in an obvious call back to Lincoln’s famous opening: “Four score and seven years ago…” King is speaking in front of the Lincoln Memorial and the references to Lincoln’s words and deeds send a powerful reminder that Lincoln’s historical project is still incomplete. King further expands on history by invoking the words of the Declaration of Independence, that all men “would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This was a promise made to future generations, but it is a promise that has so far not included Black people. This rhetorical flourish—on the one hand praising the “magnificent words” of Lincoln and the Founding Fathers while on the other hand pointing out the words

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have not fulfilled their promise for Black Americans—makes an appeal to shared patriotism criticizing the very gesture of patriotism as hollow. And yet King does not end up criticizing America itself; instead, he continues to imply the promise of America is worth celebrating and is better than America as a nation currently is. If America could just live up to its promise, all men could indeed be free, and only then America would be worth celebrating. To make this point, King uses the extended metaphor of the “check.” He announces the marchers are in Washington to “cash a check,” but notes America has written a “bad check” for Black people—a check that cannot be cashed due to “insufficient funds.” This metaphor works on multiple levels as it refers both to the promises of the past generation of great Americans, as well as to the current economic plight of Black people. Today, the “I Have a Dream” speech is remembered as a speech primarily about civil rights, and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedoms is often abbreviated as merely the March on Washington; it is largely remembered as a civil rights march and not both a civil rights and economic rights march. The check metaphor simultaneously invokes both missions of the march, even though the economic aspect of the message is often overlooked in favor of the more hopeful rhetoric in the second half of the speech. Centering focus on only the optimistic ending erases a lot of King’s message—including the actual conditions of the present and especially the urgency he invokes. While the speech clearly calls for a better future, King also announces he wants to “remind America of the fierce urgency of now” and makes references to the events of the summer of 1963. That summer saw nearly 1,000 separate demonstrations in more than 100 American cities with protesters demanding the end of segregation, the right to vote, and full access to education and jobs. The protests were often met with violence from local governments and police forces, and thousands of protesters (including King) were arrested and beaten. Medgar Evers —a leader in the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP—was murdered that June. King references the protests and acts of violence against Black Americans and other protesters, mentioning both the “narrow jail cells” some had endured as well as the “battered” individuals hurt by persecution and “the winds of police brutality.” He specifically references the cruelty in Mississippi, where Evans was murdered, and Alabama where Governor George Wallace used his 1963 inaugural address to call for “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Because of the violence of the summer and the backlash to the civil rights protesters, King states it is urgent the fight for equality continue and the marchers cannot drift into gradualism nor settle for anything less than full freedom.

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Regarding those issues, King seems to rhetorically place himself between two extreme sides. On the one hand, he anticipates the response of individuals who would ask civil rights proponents, “When will you be satisfied?” On the other, though, he senses the frustration of some audience members who may want to respond to the violence of the state with violence of their own. To the former, he offers a list of conditions in America that prevent anyone from being satisfied. To the latter, he states Black people must remember the White people marching with them and realize that they “cannot walk alone.” He also suggests that “soul force” is the only force to use in response to “physical force.” King was a strong proponent of nonviolent resistance, but he makes it clear nonviolent resistance is not passive. It will not lead the movement to compromise or slow progress in the name of those asking if they’d had enough. However, he correctly anticipates the violence to come later in the decade (especially 1968) and tries to prevent it by advocating for patience from his followers, promising “faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.” His “dream’s” optimism reminds the audience what redemption looks like and promises idealism can be turned into realism. His “dream” is not only a wish for the future but an achievable goal worth pursuing. The optimism closing the speech makes it so celebrated today. King does not merely provide a list of historical injustices nor a simple corrective for the future. Instead, he makes a cry for patriotic and spiritual redemption. While King is decidedly critical of the United States’ failure to deliver on its promise to Black citizens, he ends the speech by promising America can undo its sins and live up to its promise by simply letting everyone be free as originally intended. He lists the natural beauty throughout the nation and implies that in a place with such majesty, it is truly unnatural for there to be so much cruelty between countrymen. Indeed, the current state of America is a “crooked” or unnatural one, but the fight for equality will make it “straight.” By granting freedom to everyone and fulfilling King’s dream of racial equality, America and Americans will be saved. America will replace the “vicious racists” and “the heat of injustice” with a nation of brothers living in a land of “freedom and injustice.” The movement will turn a “mountain of despair” into a “stone of hope,” but only if the march for equality and the fight for economic and civil rights continues. King makes it clear this is all possible, ending the speech with the triumphant call of “Free at last!”

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Character Analysis Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the most prominent leader of the American civil rights movement from 1955 to his death by assassination in 1968. A Baptist minister who headed the influential Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King advocated for the end of segregation, racism, and disenfranchisement as well as economic and labor rights for Black Americans. Throughout his life, he encouraged nonviolent acts of civil disobedience. For his efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. King was born in Atlanta in 1929, the second of three children born to the Reverend Michael King and his wife Alberta. Both King’s grandfather and father preached at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and King grew up in a middle-class home on Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue—“Sweet Auburn”—one of the most prosperous Black neighborhoods in the United States. Despite being financially secure, King witnessed segregation and oppression common in the South. Throughout his life, he recounted the White friend he had until they were six when the other child told him he would no longer be allowed to play with King due to their attending separate, segregated schools. King attended Morehouse College, graduating in 1948. He was mentored by the college’s president, Benjamin Mays, whose advocacy for the social gospel and the need for Black churches to focus on improving life for people on Earth instead of salvation in the afterlife left a mark on King. After college, King attended the Crozer Theological Seminary where he first encountered the work of Mohandas Gandhi and his philosophy of nonviolent acts of disobedience. From Crozer, King went to Boston University, where he received his doctorate and met his wife, Coretta Scott King, who he married in 1953. In 1955, King was serving as the pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama. After Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat in the White people only section of a public bus, King helped lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Following the successful boycott, King formed the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC). He moved back to Atlanta and became co-pastor of Ebenezer with his father. In Atlanta, he led protests on department stores and lunch counters and was arrested for a minor traffic violation—an arrest that drew national attention to the unfair treatment of Black Americans by southern police forces and government. In the spring of 1963, he was arrested again after leading a protest in

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Birmingham, Alabama, where police officers turned fire hoses and police dogs on protesters. From jail, King wrote “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” a statement advocating civil disobedience. In August of that year, King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial, a speech encapsulating many of King’s ideas of racial equality, economic justice, the need for nonviolent acts of disobedience, and salvation both on Earth and in the afterlife. Following the speech, King continued to advocate for civil rights and was instrumental in the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. However, by that point, the civil rights movement was already splintering, with some arguing King’s protests were too cautious and the victories not large enough. Over the last few years of King’s life, King contended with both the nascent Black Power movement as well as segregation. In 1967, he began broadening his message beyond racism to include criticism of the war in Vietnam and poverty across all races. He had planned an interracial Poor People’s March on Washington for the summer of 1968, but did not live to see it come to fruition. On April 3, 1968, King was assassinated while speaking from his hotel room in Memphis where he was visiting as part of a city-wide strike of sanitation workers. Today, King is among the most celebrated and revered figures in American history. He has monuments across the country, streets named in his honor, and a national holiday commemorating his birthday.

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Themes Race and Equality “I Have a Dream” is first and foremost a speech about race and equality. King’s “dream” is that there will one day be an America in which people are judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” He hopes children will one day be able to play with each other and not be separated by the stains of segregation and prejudice. Only once this dream is realized can the nation and its people truly be free. It’s noteworthy that for King, the dream is not one either reimagining the past or simply moving on; instead, he lists the various scars of racism in American life, for it is crucial for the nation to admit there is racism in order to confront it. Those scars include Black people being the “victim[s] of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality” and being unable to rent the same hotel rooms or eat at the same restaurants as White people. These horrors cannot be unwritten or merely forgotten, for pretending they don’t exist would prevent the necessary progress and spiritual cleansing America needs. This cleansing is necessary for America to live up to its original promise. That is, the end of racism is not only something for which King hopes but also something literally owed to all people, as the foundational texts of the United States asserted all men were equal. That promise needs to be honored; the United States needs to finally guarantee freedom for all. Finally, King makes it clear that race impacts everyone in America—not just Black people. While he refers to the “new militancy” of Black Americans as a “marvelous” effort to create a better nation, he also encourages Black people to not hate White people simply for being White people. He makes strides to separate the “vicious racists” of Alabama, particularly “its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification.” He even asks the audience to note those “of our White brothers” at the march. Their freedom, King notes, is “inextricably bound” to the freedom of Black people. Indeed, the freedom of all American souls is only guaranteed once the cruelty of racism is expunged: Racism is not just a burden on the oppressed but also the racist oppressor. The oppressors are not spiritually free so long as they hold hate and bitterness in their hearts. Thus, King ends his speech by looking beyond Black and White people to include all of “God’s children,” including people of all faiths and races and hoping someday they will be able to join as one to sing a Black spiritual song and proclaim they are “Free at last!”

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The Promise of the United States King’s speech makes frequent and repeated historical references. Like many sermons, “I Have a Dream” explicitly links the past to the present, suggesting the sins of the past continue to inform the sins of the present. Thus, racism from American history begets racism in America’s present and ruins the nation. King notes the founding documents of the United States reference that “a...