Today Google celebrates Martin Luther King Day with this drawing:
And here’s his peroration of the famous “I have a dream” speech, perhaps the most stirring piece of rhetoric of the twentieth century, and one that galvanized the Civil Rights movement, already well underway. The next year Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the most significant anti-bias legislation of our time. The passage below is from Wikipedia, and do read the bit about King’s allusions and his use of “voice merging” to combine antecedents, Biblical allusions, and his own ideas into a stirring piece of elocution. Only a black preacher could have given the cadences to this speech that made it so memorable.
I have memories that I saw this live on television, but I can’t be sure. But I am sure that I saw it broadcast the day it was delivered. As with so many others who heard it, it gave me goosebumps. And I still tear up, as I just did, each time I hear it again.
“I Have a Dream” is a public speech delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. on August 28, 1963, in which he calls for an end to racism in the United States. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington, the speech was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement.
Beginning with a reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed millions of slaves in 1863, King observes that: “one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free”. Toward the end of the speech, King departed from his prepared text for a partly improvised peroration on the theme “I have a dream”, prompted by Mahalia Jackson’s cry: “Tell them about the dream, Martin!” In this part of the speech, which most excited the listeners and has now become its most famous, King described his dreams of freedom and equality arising from a land of slavery and hatred. Jon Meacham writes that, “With a single phrase, Martin Luther King Jr. joined Jefferson and Lincoln in the ranks of men who’ve shaped modern America”. The speech was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century in a 1999 poll of scholars of public address.
Even if you’ve heard this before, listen again to these five minutes:
Greatest Speech I have ever heard.
I’m pretty sure that King read many of Lincoln’s speeches and saw that he did some of the same with bible references.
Should note he gave the speech just about 3 months before JFK was assassinated and then he was assassinated on my birthday in 1968, the year I graduated from HS.
Doubtful, especially given (as Randy observes) a Supreme Court that only recently rolled back the companion legislation, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 barely made it into law in the first place. It had to overcome a legacy of “state’s rights” obstructionism that had prevented congress from enacting so much as an anti-lynching law for nearly a hundred years after the Civil War. It took the tide of good will toward the Democratic administration that followed JFK’s assassination to get it passed, and then only because the most-cunning legislative strategist of the 20th century, Lyndon Baines Johnson, was riding herd over it from the White House.
It also took cooperation between northern Democrats and the moderate wing of the Republican party (under the leadership of Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen), a thing that no longer exists.
52 years and we are still working to achieve these goals.
Always impressive. And now more so, when I now the hesitations come from partial improvisation.
Nice youtube touch: Obama popped up in the post-video links. He recently delivered a good “I had a dream [and here is what I did with it]” for his State of the union address. [Time to change it to “State of the nation”?]
Let justice run down like water
And righteousness like a mighty stream.
“Civil Rights Act of 1964,”
The question is, could it pass today?
A pretty clear no on that one. And, if they just bring parts before the Supreme Court, such as the civil rights act on voting, they will turn the clock back on that for you.
(Sorry, I mistakenly posted this response to your inquiry above.)
Doubtful, especially given (as Randy observes) a Supreme Court that only recently rolled back the companion legislation, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 barely made it into law in the first place. It had to overcome a legacy of “state’s rights” obstructionism that had prevented congress from enacting so much as an anti-lynching law for nearly a hundred years after the Civil War. It took the tide of good will toward the Democratic administration that followed JFK’s assassination to get it passed, and then only because the most-cunning legislative strategist of the 20th century, Lyndon Baines Johnson, was riding herd over it from the White House.
It also took cooperation between northern Democrats and the moderate wing of the Republican party (under the leadership of Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen), a thing that no longer exists.
I’ve heard that some of the “ways of speaking” as epitomized by MLK are very old; does anyone know how and when they originated?
You’ve hit upon a complex topic, Keith. It’s at least as old as the pulpit — older, even, since Dr. King was a student of classic rhetoric dating to antiquity. (The style, of course, is also spiked with scriptural quotations, references, and allusions.) The rhythms from the Negro spirituals from which he drew can even be traced back to west Africa, on the other side of the “middle passage.”
The most concise answer is that the tradition of the black southern minister, of which Martin was the prime practitioner of his time, arose during Reconstruction, after the Civil War, when black preachers emerged from the slave quarters to establish public churches.
No doubt one of the great speeches of the 20th century, but very specifically American in origin and for an American audience.
For me, born in England in 1945, some of Churchill’s wartime speeches rank higher in my personal list of great speeches.
I would certainly agree with that one. And the British have a way with words that most of us Yanks simply cannot match. Better use of the vocabulary, I just don’t know but Churchill was top drawer.
I’ve always felt that MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” caught some of the same spirit of defiance as Churchill’s “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” speech.
(Probably a good thing Dr. King didn’t have Twitter in 1963. Don’t think “Tweet from Birmingham Jail” would have carried quite the same gravitas.)
This speech of King’s always makes my scalp prickle and shivers run down my spine. Greatest oratory of the Civil Rights era.