MLK Jr Speech Analysis Essay

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Dream

I have been asked to offer an assessment and analysis of the famous "I Have A Dream" speech as spoken by Martin Luther King Jr. The speech was delivered more than fifty years ago but it still resonates very strongly despite the amount of time that has passed since then and King's untimely death due to an assassin's bullet. His speech came after the abolition of slavery after the Civil War, after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling but just before the Civil Rights legislation that came later in the 1960's. This brief report will evaluate the speech based on its content and the associated content. King was an obvious proponent of the founding documents and the country itself but he also clearly believed that the freedom of black people had not yet been secured.

Analysis

I say that King most definitely believed in the foundation of the United States as he referred to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as "magnificent." However, he implicitly pointed out that was written in that clause was not what was happening. Indeed, why should there be the need for amendments for woman's suffrage, the citizenship/freedom of black people, the voting of black people and so forth when the founding documents of the United States made no mention of blacks being any different than whites or women different than men when it came to freedom.

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Even after slavery was eliminated from an institutional standpoint and even after the laws and norms allowing segregated schools were done away with, people still resisted and treated black people with contempt and as second-class citizens. It is this message that is clearly at the core of what King was saying (American Rhetoric, 2016).

I see that King minced no words when speaking about those people that resisted and plotted against the freedom of blacks. His blatant reference to the "vicious racists" in Alabama is just one example. His invective was clearly directed mostly at the South because that is where the epicenter of slavery and racism was and that is what he knew. However, I see that he also mentioned areas of the country other than the South including New Hampshire, New York and Pennsylvania, among others. He was clearly trying to point to the main problem but made sure to be inclusive of all of the country since the laws and stakes….....

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