"I Have a Dream" is a seventeen minute public speech by Martin
Luther King, Jr., in which he called for racial equality and an
end to discrimination. 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 was ranked the top American speech
of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address.
According to U.S. Representative 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 monumental
area that will forever be recognized. By speaking the way he did,
he educated, he inspired, he informed not just the people there,
but people throughout America and unborn generations." At the end
of the speech, King departed from his prepared text for a partly
improvised peroration on the theme of "I have a dream", possibly
prompted by Mahalia Jackson's cry, "Tell them about the dream,
Martin!" He had delivered a speech incorporating some of the same
sections in Detroit in June 1963, when he marched on Woodward
Avenue with Walter Reuther and the Reverend C. L. Franklin, and
had rehearsed other parts.
Style
Widely hailed as a masterpiece of rhetoric, King's speech
resembles the style of a Baptist sermon (King himself was a
Baptist minister). 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. Early in his speech King alludes to Abraham
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address by saying "Five score years ago..."
Biblical allusions are also prevalent. For example, King alludes
to Psalm 30:5 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 their 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. King also quotes from Isaiah 40:4-5—"I have a dream that
every valley shall be exalted..."Additionally, King alludes to
the opening lines of Shakespeare's "Richard III" when he remarks,
"this sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will
not pass until there is an invigorating autumn..."
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 paragraph. 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. Other occasions when King
used anaphora include "One hundred years later," "We can never
be satisfied," "With this faith," "Let freedom ring," and "free
at last."
