"I Have A Dream" is the popular name given to the public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., when he spoke of his desire for a future where blacks and whites, among others, 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 250,000 civil rights supporters, the speech is often considered to be one of the greatest and most notable 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. 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 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]
At the end of the speech, Dr. 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!".[3] 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.[4]
Contents [hide] [hide]
1 Style
2 Speech title
3 Key excerpts
4 Legacy
5 Similarities to other speeches
6 Copyright dispute
7 References
8 External links
[edit]Style

Widely hailed as a masterpiece of rhetoric, King's speech resembles the style of a 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. 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[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.[6] King also quotes from Isaiah 40:4 - "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," and "Let freedom ring."
[edit]Speech title

That which we know as the "I Have A Dream Speech" has been shown to have had several versions, written at several different times [7]. The speech has no single version draft, but is an amalgamation of several drafts, and was originally called "Normalcy, Never Again." Little of this, and another "Normalcy Speech," ends up in the final draft. A draft of "Normalcy, Never Again" is housed in the Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection of Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center and Morehouse College [8]. Our focus on "I have a dream," comes through the speech's delivery. Toward the end of its delivery, a woman, perhaps Mahalia Jackson, noted African American gospel songstress, herself shouted out from the crowd, "Tell them about the dream, Martin" [9]. Dr King stopped delivering his prepared speech and started "preaching", punctuating his points with "I have a dream." Thus, this speech is rightly called by that phrase which makes it so famous and so immediate to the moment of its delivery.