I Have a Dream

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Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering his speech at the DC Civil Rights March.
For other uses, see I Have a Dream (disambiguation).

"I Have a Dream" is the popular name given to the historic public speech by Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., when he spoke of his desire for a future where blacks and whites would
coexist harmoniously as equals. King's delivery of the speech on August 28, 1963 from
the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement. Delivered to over
200,000 civil rights supporters, the speech is often considered to be one of the greatest
speeches in history and was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century by a
1999 poll of scholars of public address.[1] According to U.S. Congressman John Lewis,
who also spoke that day as the President of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee, "Dr. King had the power, the ability and the capacity to transform those steps
on the Lincoln Memorial into a modern day pulpit. By speaking the way he did, he
educated, he inspired, he informed [not just] the people there, but people throughout
America and unborn generations."[2]

Legend holds that King departed from his prepared text and began preaching
extemporaneously, but he had delivered a similar speech incorporating some of the same
sections in Detroit in June 1963, when he marched on Woodward Avenue with Walter
Reuther and the Rev. C.L. Franklin, and had rehearsed other parts.[3]

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Style
 • 2 Key quotes for Martin Luther King Jr.
• 3 Legacy
• 4 Plagiarism
• 5 Copyright dispute
• 6 References

• 7 External links

[edit] Style
Widely hailed as a masterpiece of rhetoric, King's speech resembles the style of a black
Baptist sermon. It appeals to such iconic and widely respected sources as the Bible and
invokes the United States Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation,
and the United States Constitution. Through the rhetorical device of allusion, King makes
use of phrases and language from important cultural texts for his own rhetorical purposes.
Early in his speech King alludes to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address by saying "Five score
years ago..." Biblical allusions are also prevalent. For example, King alludes to Psalm
30:5[4] in the second stanza of the speech. He says in reference to the abolition of slavery
articulated in the Emancipation Proclamation, "It came as a joyous daybreak to end the
long night of captivity." Another Biblical allusion is found in King's tenth stanza: "No,
no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters
and righteousness like a mighty stream." This is an allusion to Amos 5:24.[5] King also
quotes from Isaiah 40:4 — "I have a dream that every valley shall be exalted..."

Anaphora, the repetition of a phrase at the beginning of sentences, is a rhetorical tool

employed throughout the speech. An example of anaphora is found early as King urges
his audience to seize the moment: "Now is the time..." is repeated four times in the sixth
stanza. The most widely cited example of anaphora is found in the often quoted phrase "I
have a dream..." which is repeated eight times as King paints a picture of an integrated
and unified America for his audience.

[edit] Key quotes for Martin Luther King Jr.

• "In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects
of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every
American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as
well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this
promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of
honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check,
a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'"
• "It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This
sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is
an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an
 end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam
and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to
business as usual."
• "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning
of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal.'"
• "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where
they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character."
• "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves
and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of
brotherhood."
• "This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith
we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this
faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a
beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work
together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up
for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day."
• "Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring—
when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and
every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children—black
men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics—will be able to
join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at
last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

[edit] Legacy
The March on Washington put more pressure on the John F. Kennedy administration to
advance civil rights legislation in Congress, but in the wake of President Kennedy's
assassination later that year, his successor Lyndon B. Johnson was able to get the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 passed, followed by the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

In the wake of the speech and march, King was named Man of the Year by TIME
magazine for 1963, and in 1964, was the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize.

In 2003, the National Parks Service dedicated an inscribed marble pedestal to

commemorate the location of King's speech at the Lincoln Memorial.[6]

[edit] Plagiarism
Approximately twenty percent, the last two minutes, of King's historic speech bears a
resemblance to a speech delivered several years prior by Reverend Archibald Carey, a
personal friend of King's. Many, however, believe that the comparisons are so slightly
similar that they do not rise to the level of plagiarism.[7] See Martin Luther King, Jr.
authorship issues.

[edit] Copyright dispute