Misnistry of Foreign Affairs Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam

English Faculty

Research Proposal

Stylistic Devices in Martin Luther King’s Speech:

“I have a dream”

Supervisor: Dr. KIỀU THỊ THU HƯƠNG

Name: Ngô Xuân Thuỷ

Class: TA36A

Mã SV: TA36C.00964

Hanoi, 3/2013

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Rationale of topic selection

“Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to

rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial

justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children.

Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the

solid rock of brotherhood.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., I have a dream, 1963.

It has been fifty years since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood at the sacred place

of Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. to deliver his historic speech, “I have a dream”.

Along with this masterpiece, August 28, 1963 has been remarked as a turning point in the

twentieth century civil rights movement. Furthermore, this event played a significant role

back then as it put pressure on Kennedy administration to advance civil rights legislation

in Congress.

In the speech, Martin Luther King would call upon Americans to recognize the

injustices of the nation and the discrimination that colored people had to cope with.

Moreover, he did enlighten all citizens, both black and white people, to enact change and

correct these injustices. He would use the opportunity to inspire Americans to work for a

fair and equal society for all people. It is argue that “few speeches have so excited the

public and moved so quickly into our national consciousness as Martin Luther King’s ‘I

Have a Dream’”. The momentous oration drawn the attention of 250.000 supporters

during the March on Wahington for Jobs and Freedom which was a defining moment of

the American Civil Rights Movement.

The piece itself is an outstanding oration with the author’s profound utilization of

stylistic devices to influence audiences. The frequent and wide use of stylistic devices is

also a factor that makes “I have a dream” more impressive, attractive and persuasive. So

far, linguists and researchers have been immersed in the typical linguistic features of this

speech via discourse analysis. Nevertheless, there are few comprehensive studies of

stylistic devices used as the majority of people who listen to political speeches pay more

attention to the content of what is being said rather than how it is being said. Thus, the

audience, though being affected by the style of the speaker’s speech in general, may have

little interest in the stylistic analysis of what is being said in particular. Accordingly, they,

though are able to evaluate a speaker’s delivery style may pay rare attention to the

colorful meaning that each of the stylistic devices can bring in the speech.

With a view to creating favorable conditions for those who want to gain insight

into stylistics and identify how Martin Luther King Jr., compels his audience to think and

challenges Americans to act to achieve an equal America in which he envisions, the

writer decided to carry out a detailed analysis of: Stylistic Devices in Martin Luther

King’s Speech, “I have a dream”.

1.2 Research questions

The focus of this study lies on scrutinizing the pervasiveness of stylistic devices

in the “I have a dream”, underlining its crucial role in persuading and influencing the

audiences. Thus, the writer endeavours to search the answer for these following

questions:

1) What are stylistic devices utilized in “I have a dream” by Martin Luther King?

2) What are linguistic features of those stylistic devices?

3) How are the contributions of stylistic devices to the success of “I have a

dream”?

1.3 Aims and objectives of the study

The study is aimed at investigating into stylistic devices existed in “I have a

dream” by Martin Luther King and analyzing how the orator utilizes them to achieve

intended purpose. In order to attain those aims, the following objectives need to be

fulfilled:

First, providing a theoretical framework of stylistics and stylistic devices.

Second, investigating the prevalance of stylistic devices and the frequencies of

their occurrence in “I have a dream”.

Third, analyzing how the orator utilizes stylistic devices to achieve his purposes

via the speech.

Finally, identifying how those stylistic devices impact the audiences and

contribute to the success of both the speech and the orator.

1.4 Significance of the study

It is the fact that there are not many comprehensive studies related to English

stylistics and stylistic devices not only in the world, but also in Vietnam as this realm

appears to be vague and complicated. Stylistic devices, though, is a prevailing linguistic

phenomenon in public speaking, most studies on it solely analyze literary texts such as

poems or proses. To a certain extent, this research is expected to bring several

contributions to the students of English Department, espeacially those who have interest

in Linguistics.

Furthermore, the author wish this study would give a better understanding of the

famous speech “I have a dream” by Martin Luther King from the stylistic perspective. In

doing so, the role of stylistic devices in influencing the audiences might be revealed and

simultaneously the reason why this masterpiece keeps echoing in Amercans’ mind over

the last fifty years. Hopefully, readers would find the research helpful and informative to

gain a deeper insight into this category of language utilization.

1.5 Scope of the study

Due to the limited time and reference sources, the author does not intend to

analyze all types of stylistic devices and their functions in generalized context as it is qite

an impossible task for a graduation paper. Instead, the author prefers focusing on

investigating into linguistic feature of stylistic devices an their frequencies of occurrence

in the speech “I have a dream” by Martin Luther King.

1.6 Methodology and Data Collection

The writer applies both qualitative and quantitative methods in conducting the

study. In the qualitative approach, the writer explores some typical cases and uses the

knowledge of stylistics to scrutinize and analyzes stylistic devices used. Then, the writer

manages to examine the impacts that each type of stylistic devices has on the audience.

Quantitatively, the writer observes and calculates the frequency as well as the percentage

of the times each type of stylistic devices occurs in “I have a dream” speech.

Transcripts of the speech for analyzing is collected from various reliable sources,

then the author will compare them to the original video to find out the most precise one.

All the instances used in the research are quoted from the transcript without any change

of words or structure.

1.7 Organization of the study

The present study consists of five chapters:

Chapter 1 (Introduction) introduces the rationale, aims and objectives, research

questions, significance, methodology and scope of the study.

Chapter 2 (Literature Review) provides a synopsis of relevant information

originated from previous studies on of stylistics and stylistic devices

Chapter 3 (The Study) illustrates and analyzes how Martin Luther King utilize

stylistic devices to achieve certain purposes

Chapter 4 (Conclusion), the writer presents a concise conclusion of the study, sum

up major findings, reviews the study’s limitations and offers some suggestions for further

study.

Chapter 2: Literature review

2.1 A review of previous studies

2.1.1 Studies of Stylistics and Stylistic Devices

Linguists such as Bazerman (The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article

in Science, 1988), Kramsch (Language and Culture, 2003), Galperin (Stylistics, 1977),

Verdonk (Stylistics, 2003) have done many researches on linguistics including stylistic

devices to find out their semantic, syntactic as well as pragmatic features, especially their

positive effect. The main source for this thesis is “Stylistics” by Galperin (1977). He

define a stylistic device as “a conscious and intentional intensification of some typical

structural and/ or semantic property of a language unit (netral or expressive) promoted to

a generalized status and thus becoming a generative model” (1977: 29).

In Vietnamese, stylistic devices is also a matter of great concern to several

linguists such as Dinh and Nguyen in “Thực hành phong cách học tiếng Việt” (1993) and

“Phong cách học tiếng Việt” (1995); Huu in “Phong cách học tiếng Việt hiện đại” (2011).

In the books entitled “Phong cách học tiếng Việt” (1995) and “Thực hành phong cách

học tiếng Việt” (1993), a clear definition of stylictic devices in Vietnamese and a range of

various stylistic devices have been provided.

The above-mentioned linguistic theories would give better understanding about

stylistics and stylistic devices of which the writer intends to make use for analyzing in

this thesis.

2.2.2 Studies of “I have a dream” by Martin Luther King

In spite of its popularity and significant role, “I have a dream” speech has only

been the topic for an uncommonly small number of studies related to stylistics. Dang

(2010) conducted a critical discouse analysis of “I have a dream” by Martin Luther King.

In this thesis, the writer analyzed such aspects as clause and clause complex; transitivity;

mood and modality; thematization, repetitions and voice.

Besides, two theses entitled “A metaphorical analysis of Matin Luther King Jr.’s

‘I have a dream speech’” by Ciesinki (2010) and “Figurative Languages in Martin Luther

King, Jr.’s speech ‘I have a dream’” by Imraatu (2011) only touch upon a limited

number of stylistics devices as paralellism, similies, metaphors and repetitions.

The most related research is “A stylistic analysis of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have

a dream’” by Zhanghai (1988). The writer, however, only touches upon a restricted

number of stylistic devices namely simile, metaphor, paralellism and repetition. In fact,

the quality of this thesis is insufficient to be used as an example for analyzing “I have a

dream” from the perspective of stylistics.

2.2 Theoretical Framework

2.2.1 Stylistics

As defined by Galperin (1977), stylistics is the study of style and it is also a

branch or general linguistics. Stylistics in the twentieth century replaces and expands on

the earlier discipline known as rhetoric. It deals mainly with two interdependent tasks:

“the investigation of the inventory of special language media which by their ontological

features secure the desirable effect of the utterance and certain types of texts (discourse)

which due to the choice and arrangement of language means are distinguished by

pragmatic aspect of the communication.”

Stylistics has been considered “a developing and controversial field of study”

(Crystal and Davy, 1969: vii) for several decades. The existing approaches to stylistic

analysis are numerous and diverse, causing difficulties to a researcher striving to apply

methods of stylistic analysis and to draw a distinct line of demarcation between them.

Hoffmannová (1997.5) argued that “stylistics is a field of study which is not only highly

interdisciplinary but also considerably eclectic”.

In Crystal’s reference book A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics stylistics is

defined as “a branch of linguistics which studies the features of situationally distinctive

uses (varieties) of language, and tries to establish principles capable of accounting for

particular choices made by individual and social groups in their use of language” (1992:

332). All the three key features which are considered highly relevant with regard to style,

variation, distinctiveness and choice, are incorporated in this definition. In this dictionary

the term style, however, is not recognized as an independent entry suitable to serve as a

technical term.

2.2.2 Stylistic devices

2.2.2.1 Definition of Stylistic devices

According to Galperin (1977), a stylistic device is a conscious and intentional

literary use of some of the facts of the language (including expressive means) in which

the most essential features (both structural and semantic) of the language forms are raised

to a generalised level and thereby present a generative model. Most stylistic devices may

be regarded as aiming at the further intensification of the emotional or logical emphasis

contained in the corresponding expressive means (1977: 26–28). This conscious

transformation of a language fact into a stylistic device has been observed by certain

linguists whose interests in scientific research have gone beyond the boundaries of

grammar.

The birth of a stylistic device is not accidental. Language means which are used

with more or less definite aims of communication and in one and the same function in

various passages of writing begin gradually to develop new features, a wider range of

functions and become a relative means of the language. It would perhaps be more correct

to say that unlike expressive means stylistic devices are patterns of the language whereas

the expressive means do not form patterns.

2.2.2.2 Expressive means and Stylistic devices

The interrelation between expressive means and stylistic devices can be worded in

terms of the theory of information. Expressive means have a greater degree of

predictability than stylistic devices. Stylistic devices carry a greater amount of

information because if they are at all predictable they are still less predictable than

expressive means.

Galperin (1977: 24) stated that “The expressive means of a language are those

phonetic means, morphological forms, means of word-building, and lexical,

phraseological and syntactic forms, all of which function in the language for the

emotional or logical intensification of an utterance. Some of them are normalised and

labelled in dictionaries as intensifiers. In most cases they have corresponding neutral

synonymous forms.”

The most powerful expressive means of any language are phonetic. The human

voice can indicate subtle nuances of meaning that no other means can attain. Pitch,

melody, stress, pausation, drawling, drawing out certain syllables, whispering, a sing-

song manner of speech and other ways of using the voice are more effective than any

other means in intensifying an utterance emotionally or logically.

At the lexical level there are a great many words which due to their inner

expressiveness, constitute a special layer. There are words with emotive meaning only,

words which have both, referential and emotive meaning, words which still retain a

twofold meaning (denotative and connotative), words belonging to special groups of

literary English or of non-standard English (poetic, archaic, vulgar, etc.). The expressive

power of these words cannot be doubted, especially when they are compared with the

neutral vocabulary. The same can be said about the set expressions of the language

(proverbs and sayings). Special attention should be paid to idioms which are mostly

based on expressiveness. P. Kvetko (2002) points out that idioms are mostly formed by

the idiomatisation of free word groups and fixed word combinations.

Finally, on the syntactic level there are many constructions which, when set

against synonymous ones, will reveal a certain degree of logical or emotional emphasis.

In the English language there are many syntactic patterns which serve to intensify

emotional quality In the spoken utterances syntactic patterns achieve a particular degree

of expressiveness by means of using more or less stylistically marked lexis. A sentence

pattern can undergo a radical change, starting from a simple unemotive question turning

into a more and more emphatic, even offensive, vulgar speech.

The expressive means of the language are studied respectively in manuals of

phonetics, grammar, lexicology and stylistics. Stylistics, however, observes not only the

nature of an expressive means but also its potential capacity for becoming a stylistic

device.

2.2.3 An overview of Martin Luther King and the speech “I have a dream”

2.2.3.1 Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968), the youngest person

to ever be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, is revered around the world for his

leadership in the American Civil Rights Movement. He is considered the leader of the

most successful decade of this movement, from 1957 to 1968, including the Montgomery

Bus Boycott, the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the massive

anti‐discrimination protest in Birmingham Alabama, the Selma‐to Montgomery Freedom

March, and his rallying call to support the sanitation workers strike, where he was

assassinated in 1968. He is remembered alongside the great human rights activists of the

world, including India’s Mahatma Gandhi. He is most widely renowned for his famous

speech, “I have a Dream,” which he delivered as the key note speaker during the March

on Washington, in 1963. Although there are those who are invested in discrediting him

with charges of academic plagiarism and marital infidelity today, his moving speeches,

writings, and life‐accomplishments continue to be studied as sources of inspiration for

universal ideals of world peace, human rights, and democracy.

Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta Georgia. He was the son of the late

Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. Both his father and

grandfather served as pastors of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King acted as

co‐pastor alongside his father in the early 1960s. King wrote about the great influence his

father had on him as an activist for social justice, in an essay titled “An Autobiography of

Religious Development”. Recent scholarship illustrates that the teachings and traditions

of the black Baptist church were a greater influence on his life and work than the

teachings of Gandhi, as portrayed by mass culture.

King Jr. attended Atlanta University Laboratory School and Booker T.

Washington High School, where he graduated at the age of fifteen. He received a degree

in sociology from Morehouse College in 1948, and then entered Crozer Theological

Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania to pursue a degree in ministry. His seminary studies

there are considered to be the turning point from a mediocre to serious student. It is

known that he was greatly influenced at this point in his life by the works of theologian

Reinhold Niebuhr, whom wrote and studied the nature of man’s sinfulness, and Mahatma

Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance. He received a bachelor degree in Divinity in 1951. That

same year in the fall, King enrolled at Boston University to pursue a doctorate degree in

Theology and met his wife‐to‐be, Coretta Scott. King married Scott in 1953 and received

his PhD in 1955. They gave birth to four children together.

By 1954, King was the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in

Montgomery Alabama, and a member of the National Association for the Advancement

of Colored People (NAACP), which is considered the most influential organization for

the advocacy of African Americans at that time. As such, King was called on to lead the

Montgomery Improvement Association in 1955 the year of Rosa Park’s arrest for

refusing to comply with Montgomery Public Transportation’s system of segregation and

the subsequent bus boycott. The bus boycott lasted 382 days, in which time King arose as

a national leader of one of the first successful African American non‐violent protests. In

December of 1956, the United States Supreme Court passed the landmark ruling, Brown

v. Board of Education, which ruled against segregation.

The success of the bus boycott led King to draw a group of Southern ministers to

meet at the Negro Leaders Conference on Nonviolent Integration in 1957. The timing

allowed King to capitalize on the momentum gained from the success of the boycott. The

conference was attended by about sixty ministers who divulged a manifesto to protest

white treatment of blacks and encouraged blacks to seek social justice through non‐

violent means. This conference later became known as the Southern Christian Leadership

Conference (SCLC), which functioned as an umbrella organization that aimed to

coordinate chapters and local groups affiliated with the cause of racial discrimination,

such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the NAACP.

In 1959 King visited India, where it is popularly known that he became more

influenced by the philosophy of Gandhian nonviolence. Upon his return from India, King

moved to Atlanta Georgia and acted as co‐pastor of Ebenezer Baptist church with his

father Martin Luther King Sr. and became involved with the Student Nonviolent

Coordinating Committee (SNCC). This was a student group led by Ella Baker that carried

out direct‐action, nonviolent protests against segregation of public libraries, swimming

pools, parks, and lunch counters. In 1960 King was arrested for his participation in one of

SNCC’s lunch counter sit‐ins. After his arrest, King was sentenced to prison. His

sentence garnered national media attention, and resulted in John F. Kennedy’s

intervention on behalf of King, which led to his release from prison. In 1963 King led the

March on Washington where he delivered his world‐renowned speech, “I Have a

Dream.” That same year Time magazine named King “Man of the Year.” The following

year, King was awarded The Nobel Peace Prize and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was

passed.

By 1965, King began to face criticism for his nonviolent approaches by civil

rights groups such as the SNCC, now led by Stokely Carmichael, and other vocal leaders

who challenged King’s leadership with suggestions for more radical and militant

approaches for the movement. The 1965 March for Voting Rights in Selma Alabama

proved to be a pinnacle event that furthered the divide between King and his nonviolent

approach and African Americans who countered with the more aggressive demands of

the black power movement. In Selma, King led a group of 400 marchers across the

Edmund Pettus Bridge. When the marchers were confronted by state troopers on the

bridge, King led the marchers into prayer rather than confrontation.

The more radicalized civil right activists such as Malcolm X chided King for his

passive resistance. The black nationalism of the black power movement called for a

stronger approach. King began a rapid decline of influence within this part of the

movement. At the same time, he began to lose favor with the national elites in

Washington D.C. Moreover, he became the target of an insidious FBI surveillance

project, in which King’s marital infidelities, and ties to people associated with the

communist Party were exploited, in an attempt to discredit King and force him to recede

as the frontrunner of the movement.

From 1965 to 1968, King turned his attention to the struggles of the poor and

down‐ trodden, and his anti‐Vietnam War stance, which both furthered his alienation, this

time from liberal democrat supporters. In 1968 King was invited to Memphis Tennessee

to represent a strike by the sanitation workers there. He was shot as he stood on the

balcony of his hotel. Martin Luther King Jr. became a national icon after his death. He is

remembered as a one‐man movement that changed America for the better, and is a

symbol of the progressive development of American democracy.

2.2.3.2 The speech “I have a dream”

“I have a dream” is a 17-minute public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr.

delivered on August, 1963, in which he called for racial equality and an end to

discrimination. The speech, 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 200.000 civil rights supporters, the mastery and magic of

Martin Luther King’s historic speech was ranked the top American speech of the 20 th

century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address (Hansen, 2003: 56)

Chapter 3: The study

3.1 Hypothesis

Stylistic devices is prevalently and intentionally utilized in “I have a dream” by

Martin Luther King in order to achieve desired purposes.

3.2 Data and Causes for data selection

The data, retrieved from trustworthy websites, include a transcript and a video of

the 17-minute speech “I have a dream” by Martin Luther King on August 28, 1963. After

comparing with the original video of the speech, the writer decides to select the two

following sources as they are most accurate ones that can be used for analyzing.

1) Transcript: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/martin-luther-kings-speech-dream-

full-text/story?id=14358231

2) Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs

3.3 Analyzing Procedure

The writer conducts analyzing procedure with four main steps with a view to

fulfilling objectives of this study:

Firstly, the theoreical framework of each section is briefly reviewed.

Secondly, three to five instances of specific stylistic devices are presented for

illustration.

Thirdly, stylistic devices in “I have a dream” by Martin Luther King are divided

into three catogories: phonetic stylistc devices, lexical stylistic devices and

syntactical stylistic devices. Each stylistic device is analyzed in the correlation

with the respective theories to identify their linguistic features.

Finally, the impacts of each stylistic device on the audiences are also explored.

Bibliography

English sources

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2. Bradford, R. (1977). Stylistics: The New Critical Idiom. Routledge: London and

New York.

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Handbook of Modern Rhetoric. Harcourt, Brace and Company – New York.

4. Calloway, T. and John, L. L. (1993). Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Sermonic

Power of Public Discourse. The University of Alabama Press.

5. Carson, C. (1998). The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York:

Warner Books.

6. Galperin, J.R. (1977). Stylistics 2nd edition. Moscow “Higher school.

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Inspired a Nation. New York: HarperCollins Publisher Inc.

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Press.

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and New York.

11. Ling, P. (2002). Martin Luther King, Jr. London: Routledge.

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Bookworms Factfiles.

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and New York.

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Vietnamese sources

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Giáo dục.

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Giáo dục.

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Học Sư Phạm

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id=14358231 retrieved on March 5, 2013 at 7:20 am.

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on March 7, 2013 at 7:22 am.

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text_n_809993.html retrieved on March 7, 2013 at 5:14 pm.

28. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-bio.html

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Appendix

“I Have a Dream”

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest

demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today,

signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon

light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering

injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of

the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of

discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in

the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is

still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own

land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our

republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of

Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall

heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be

guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is

obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens

of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the

Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that

there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've

come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and

the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of

Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing

drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the

time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial

justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the

solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's

children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering

summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating

autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And

those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will

have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither

rest nor tranquility in America

until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to

shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold

which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we

must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by

drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on

the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to

degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights

of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us

to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their

presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.

And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always

march ahead. We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?"

We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of

police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of

travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We

cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a

larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-

hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be

satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes

he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied

until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."1

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations.

Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from

areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution

and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative

suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back

to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go

back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that

somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.

It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its

creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the

sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat

of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of

freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will

not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor

having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day

right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with

little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain

shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be

made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it

together."2

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a

beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to

pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together,

knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to

sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.Land where my fathers died,

land of the Pilgrim's pride,From every mountainside, let freedom ring!And if America is

to be a great nation, this must become true.And so let freedom ring from the prodigious

hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.Let freedom ring from the

heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped

Rockies of Colorado.Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.But not

only that:Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.Let freedom ring from

Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of

Mississippi.From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every

village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that

day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants

and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!