TOW #13: "I Have a Dream" by Martin Luther King, Jr.

     "I Have a Dream" by Martin Luther King, Jr. is undoubtedly one of the most important speeches in American history. King delivered this speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. in the prime of the Civil Rights Movement in order to encourage his audience—every single American—to take a stand against the injustice against colored people. King is a well-known American Civil Rights activist, clergyman, and humanitarian. He effectively achieves his purpose with his use of powerful imagery and allusions.

     King's powerful imagery helps him achieve his purpose because with the imagery comes a sense of disappointment toward American society which underscores how American values really had not come a long way since Abraham Lincoln's signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Touching on this issue, King states, "One hundred years later, the life of the negro is sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the negro lives on the lonely island of poverty in the vast ocean of material prosperity" (para. 3). These images portray segregation as manacles and discrimination as chains, further identifying colored people as restricted and powerless against the injustice that conquers them. He additionally describes poverty as an island in an ocean of material prosperity, signaling that there is no way out.

    King alludes to not only historical events but also American patriotic songs. Toward the end of his speech, he emphasizes the irony in the popular song "My Country 'Tis of Thee" by stating that the lyrics cannot really be true until African Americans are "set free." He then brings up the idea of America as one whole united country when he continues the song. He says that freedom should ring from the "prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire" and the "mighty mountains of New York" and the "heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania" but also the "Stone Mountain of Georgia" and the "Lookout Mountain of Tennessee" and from "every hill and molehill of Mississippi."

I Have a Dream

(Picture and speech source: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm)