Speech Outline

 “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke these famous words at the end of his iconic I Have A Dream speech, given at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The historic gathering was planned by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in response to violent attacks on peaceful Civil Rights protestors in Birmingham Alabama earlier that year. In the speech, King effectively called for equality and freedom for African Americans, tying in to Sustainable Development Goal No. 16: peace, justice, and strong institutions.

To begin, King employs various strategies in order to establish trust with his audience of  an estimated 250,000 people

• Commonplaces
• Vivid language
• Established credibility

With such a large and politically charged audience, King had to very carefully think about the rhetorical situation when composing his speech.

• What King knew about the audience
• Exigence
• Kairos

Delivery

• Originally a carefully planned manuscript
• Reacted to his audience
• Extemporaneously spoke, riffed on the theme of his “dream”

King’s I Have a Dream speech is an important civil artifact to analyze because it was very effective in catalyzing change. By learning about the strategies King used, we can include them in contemporary speeches in order to effectively call people to take action to achieve the sustainable development goals. Thank you.

Essay Rough Draft

Both Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream Speech and John Lewis’s 1963 March on Washington Speech were given at the same public protests and intended to accomplish the same goal of encouraging the American people and government to take immediate action concerning civil rights issues in the United States, particularly regarding workplace discrimination and police brutality. However, the two speeches attempt to motivate the audience in very different ways. With his impassioned delivery and impromptu ending, King appealed to people’s sense of humanity and patriotism, offering them a sense of hope that things could be different in the future. Lewis’s speech, on the other hand, drew on the African American community’s hardships in order to create a sense of urgency within his audience and convince D.C. legislatures that immediate action was necessary, specifically to address police brutality given attacks on peaceful protesters in Alabama earlier that year. Both speeches effectively took the rhetorical situation into account, while using different strategies to build trust with their audience and unity within the Civil Rights Movement.

One of the ways in which the speeches are similar is that they both consider recent events and speak about the various hardships African Americans were facing. King eloquently describes how African Americans were issued a “blank check” for equality and reminds everyone of the promises made in the Emancipation Proclamation for freedom and equality. Lewis, on the other hand, gets more specific and speaks about specific instances in which African Americans were denied their rights as American citizens.

A main difference in the two speeches is how King and Lewis attempted to build trust with their audiences. King’s speech established his own credibility by saying, “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.” By saying this, King shows that he holds stake in the issue of Civil Rights because it will directly impact his family. He also encourages the audience to think about their own families and the impact their actions would have on their children and future generations. On the other hand, Lewis calls on the people to join together and builds unity throughout the crowd and the larger Civil Rights movement as a whole by saying that “all of us must get in on the revolution” and that “all over this nation, the black masses are on the march!” Ultimately, King establishes trust by showing he has stakes in the issue while Lewis builds trust by bringing people together over shared hardships and experiences. Lewis’ speech also has more of a political tone rather than an aspirational tone, as he calls out individual actions by the government that contradict that promise of freedom and equality for all Americans. 

In the final body paragraph, I will talk about the delivery of the speeches, specifically the impromptu nature of King’s speech at the end. Both of the speakers have fiery, impassioned delivery. On the one hand, King speaks almost joyfully on what he sees as a promising future, one where “all of God’s children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands,” in unity and equality. Conversely, Lewis expresses his anger at the state of current affairs and the federal government at the time for their inaction, saying, “I want to know, who’s side is the federal government on?” This question, which is slightly accusatory, is effective in stirring the audience and inspiring Americans nationwide to advocate for change.

In conclusion, both King and Lewis gave very effective speeches that emphasized the urgency required in addressing Civil Rights, but they used very different approaches in accomplishing this goal. While King spoke about commonplaces such as the American Dream that inspired and gave hope to the audience, Lewis called out more specifically some of the inequalities in American society at the time in order to ignite a flame of social change. Both of these strategies can be very useful when trying to advocate for policy change, as they were, but it’s important in doing so to analyze the political climate to make sure they will be well-received.