How Did Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream Speech

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"The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges." This moving statement is from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech, "I have a Dream". This speech was given in front of hundreds of thousands of people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on August of 1963, where Dr. King was advocating civil rights and readdressing the racial injustice and unequal opportunity African Americans endured and additionally, voicing the urgent desires to end racial segregation and discrimination. Reaching to the nation and the world and a wide range audience demographic from low-income and high-income; from lawmakers to the unemployed. Martin Luther King’s delivery of this impactful …show more content…
King’s speech, he retells the promises given to the American people with the examples from Emancipation Proclamation, which was published in 1863, granting freedom to all slaves in the Confederate States (civilwar.com) and similar promises from the Declaration of Independence giving facts, examples and credibility of those seeking justice likewise. Furthermore, Martin Luther King, Jr. uses phrases of imagery and allusions of emotion on how African Americans have been living with racial injustice to create visual representations in the mind of the audience, as they grasp mentally and emotionally. Examples of anaphora, the recurrence of a phrase at the beginning of successive lines, besides the famous, “I Have a Dream”, he effectively restates the phrases “We can never be satisfied with”, “One hundred years later”, and “free at last”. He uses alliterations that bring a harmonizing tone to the speech with “Rise from the dark and desolate and “Let freedom ring from the Mighty Mountains of New York” for example. From reading this speech, it is clear the passion he expresses towards civil rights for all Americans.

When I compare how I read the “I Have a Dream” to the delivery of the speech in Dr. King’s voice in the audio, I recognized the calm pacing he uses. He uses pauses to effectively grab his audience’s attention and have them comprehend every statement; the connection he makes with the audience is incredibly strong that, as you can hear in the audio, the audience
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