Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the foreground with other people standing attentively in the background

"I Have a Dream" Speech

by Martin Luther King Jr.

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The importance and enduring relevance of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech

Summary:

Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech is important and enduringly relevant because it eloquently articulates the ideals of equality and freedom, inspiring generations to continue the fight against racial injustice. The speech's powerful vision for a future where people are judged by their character rather than their skin color remains a cornerstone in the ongoing struggle for civil rights and social justice.

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Why was the "I Have a Dream" speech important?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered on August 28th, 1963, represented a galvanizing moment and high point in the civil rights movement, a movement which had been gaining steam since the 1950s.

King delivered the speech during the March on Washington, in which Black people and their white supporters hoped to add pressure to the government in order to ensure passage of civil rights legislation. President John F. Kennedy was relying on a large turnout during the march to help him advance his civil rights agenda, something he had promised Eleanor Roosevelt to promote in return for her important endorsement of his presidential bid in 1960.

The crowd and King's electrifying speech delivered Kennedy, and later President Lyndon Johnson, the public support these men needed to get landmark civil rights legislation passed.

The speech arrived at that rare moment when exactly the right words met exactly the right time for them to be heard. King saw his speech as marking the hundred-year anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, which freed millions of enslaved people before the Civil War was over. King used this anniversary as a moment to comment on the need for white people to make good on a longstanding "promissory note" to fulfill America's promise of equality to all people.

The speech was notable for inspiring white people to support the expansion of Black rights while at the same time speaking directly to Black people about their challenges and aspirations.

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Why was the "I Have a Dream" speech important?

For one, the "I Have a Dream" speech that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered in 1963 remains important today because it is such a masterful piece of oratory and because Dr. King is such an incredibly important figure in American history as well as in the fight for civil rights for Black Americans. More important, however, is that the speech still resonates with people in the twenty-first century because Black Americans still suffer from "withering injustice" when it comes to discrimination and, often, poverty.

Practices like redlining, when banks refuse to grant loans to individuals who live in poorer areas (which disproportionately affects people of color who live in urban areas) so that they cannot move into more affluent communities or renovate their homes, lead to a lack of the social mobility that is enjoyed by white Americans. Police brutality also disproportionately affects Black Americans, and Black people who commit crimes are much more likely to go to jail or to receive harsher sentences than their white counterparts.

In short, people are still arguing about whether "Black Lives Matter" more than half a century after Dr. King's speech. These facts, along with a great many more, seem to indicate that Dr. King's dream for all Black Americans is still only a dream and not yet a reality.

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What was the purpose of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech and why does its importance persist today?

The purpose of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech was at least twofold: it was an integral part of the August 28, 1963 march on Washington, DC for the realization of economic and civil rights for blacks, and it provided much-needed support for civil rights legislation that President John F. Kennedy had proposed to Congress two months prior, in June. 

The speech was important in 1963 because the country was still legally segregated.  It was not until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that it became illegal for state and local authorities to segregate Americans on the basis of their race. Because blacks had no federal protection, they were denied access to schools, businesses, and other organizations because of their race. Moreover, discrimination was holding black people back from equal access to jobs. King's speech was a call to follow through on the promises of the Emancipation Proclamation one hundred years before and the Declaration of Independence's claim that "all men are created equal."  King refers to these seminal documents along with the Constitution to point out that American blacks were denied many of the basic human rights that their citizenship guaranteed for them.

The speech is still important today because it reminds us that in America, the promises our government makes in its founding documents are not always carried out for all people.  Though blacks have legal protection from discrimination, America still has social problems centered on race. Evidence used to support this argument include findings that blacks are incarcerated at higher rates than other races and are treated unfairly by police and the judicial system. Blacks applying for mortgages and other loans find it more difficult to borrow. Unemployment  and poverty rates are higher for African Americans than for other races. The Black Lives Matter movement was founded after the murder of a black teenager and subsequent acquittal of his killer. It labors to move black Americans forward in American society. 

Though the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 and America elected its first black president in 2008, many of the inequities Dr. King cited in his speech continue to trouble America. The "I Have a Dream" speech reminds Americans of the continued work required to deliver social justice to all Americans. 

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What is the importance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech?

From almost all accounts, when King gave his "I Have a Dream" stump speech (he had delivered it before) to the crowds on the Mall in Washington, D.C. in 1963, this was a particularly powerful and riveting event in the civil rights movement. King outdid himself in his delivery, electrifying an audience composed of both blacks and whites. It was one of those occasions where the message and the moment meshed magnificently.

Beyond that, the speech itself is a masterwork of rhetoric or persuasion. King convincingly pounds home his point that blacks can no longer be "patient" and wait for justice. They have waited, he says, a hundred years, always with the promise that if they wait a little longer, their day will come. King declares that day is now, and that there is no reason to delay any longer. He speaks of the "fierce urgency of now."

Further, he appeals to whites as well as blacks in this speech, knowing that blacks are a minority and that he needs white support. He addresses to white self-interest, saying the following:

There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.

But he also reassures his white audience that blacks don't plan to engage in violence or wrong-doing to obtain their rights.

He strategically ends the speech in a stirring way by appealing to the highest ideals of black and whites and envisioning a time of equality.

The speech galvanized public support for equal rights for blacks—support that, when Johnson some time later became President, translated into landmark legislation protecting black rights.

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What is the importance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech?

One of the most important goals of King's "I Have a Dream" speech was to remind the American people that the goal of true freedom for African Americans had not yet been realized, and he began the speech by using lines alluding to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, an opening designed to link Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 to King's speech on the Washington Mall in 1963.  Implicit in the opening sentence of King's speech is that, despite the passage of 100 years, the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation was still, in most respects, a promise, not a reality.

Among other things, King reminded his audience that the Declaration of Independence extended a promise of freedom to all Americans, and he used an economic metaphor to get his point across: he said that African Americans were there to cash a check, a promissory note created by the Declaration, and it was up to the American people to make sure that check was not returned marked "insufficient funds."  His use of the "check" metaphor was particularly effective because it brought the abstract concept of seeking freedom into the real world--many people in his audience and beyond the Mall, white and black, understood the contract implied by a check presented for payment.

On the whole, the importance of King's speech was that it brought into focus, particularly for the masses of people not engaged in the struggle for civil rights, that the struggle was a work in progress.

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What is the importance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech?

Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered to thousands of observers on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August of 1963, essentially established King as the national spokesperson for the civil rights movement. King had long been recognized as an important leader in the movement, but this speech, thanks in part to its power and elegance, and also to its setting and visibility, brought King the acclaim of white liberals. Later that year, he was TIME Magazine's man of the year, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. It was in many ways the crowning achievement of King's career, mostly it helped to raise pressure on the federal government to pass a Civil Rights Act, which they did in 1964.

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Why is Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech historically significant?

Because it so eloquently puts forth the goals of the Civil Rights Movement.  It offered a window to the future, a vision of what American society could be in terms of race relations and social justice.

I think it has become even more important in the past few years given the election of the country's first African-American President, roughly 44 years after Martin Luther King's famous speech.  On Inauguration Day, I was in Washington DC, and once the crowds had dispersed (which took forever), I walked from the spot in front of the Washington Monument where MLK had given that very speech, to the front of the Capitol Building where Obama had been sworn in.  It took me about an hour.  It took MLK and the nation almost half a century.

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Why is Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech historically significant?

Dr. King's speech has historical relevance because it literally gave a voice to the Civil Rights Movement.  In one speech, he was able to give structure and form to the movement.  The speech reached across all boundaries and humanized the struggle as not one rooted in political goals as much as human decency.  The Civil Rights Movement was given a structure that expressed how the denial of such rights is tantamount to denying human dignity.  The speech was also a way to pull more people into the struggle, weakening resistance due to apathy or a lack of awareness.  The speech was important historically because it helped to match a specific voice to the overall movement.

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Why is Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech historically significant?

This speech was important historically for a few reasons:

1. It symbolizes a moment in time, the Civil Rights Movement. As stated above, this was important to secure equal rights regardless of race.

2. It references major pieces of history attaching them to the moment he was creating himself. He quoted from the Declaration of Independence, alludes to the Gettysburg address and Abe Lincoln, and references the music of both a Negro spiritual and a national patriotic song, My Country Tis of Thee. Each of these pieces deal with freedom and the rights of man.

3. He united the country by citing many mountain ranges in many states. This is important because each section of America represents mini-cultures.

4. The inspiration that this speech induced models what happens in all great movements. Thus, when people want to cause a great act, here is a model worth a good look to copy. King is noted for his non-violent approach to enacting change and this speech symbolizes that.

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Why is Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech historically significant?

The reason that this speech is considered to be an important part of history is that it was connected to the 1963 March on Washington and that march is connected to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  That law was the most important law in terms of the rights of minorities to be passed in the 20th century, in my opinion.

What the Civil Rights Act said was that no businesses or public institutions (except for private clubs) could discriminate against people on the basis of race and some other things.  This meant that non-whites could no longer be told to sit in the back of a bus or movie theater.  They could no longer be banned from certain restaurants. This was hugely important.

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What is the significance of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech?

This speech, still so powerful after all these years, was delivered, symbolically, on the front steps of the Lincoln Memorial, purposely reminding viewers/listeners that it was Lincoln who, during the American Civil War had issued the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery in the rebellious Southern states.  King called on his theological knowledge and rhetorical skills to create a body of work that reads like poetry.  The rhythm of repeated phrases such as "I have a dream" and "We will not be satisfied" lull the reader into engagement of his ideas, almost without realizing it.  Interestingly, King largely abandoned his prepared notes as he talked, so the magnificent, musical result was largely spontaneous.

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