I Have a Dream
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Paper 12; Module 34; E Text UGC MHRD e Pathshala Subject: English Principal Investigator: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee, University of Hyderabad Paper 05: “American Literature” Paper Coordinator: Prof. Niladri Chatterjee, University of Kalyani Module No 34: Martin Luther King Jr.: I Have a Dream Content writer: Mr. Arif Ahammed, University of Hyderabad Content Reviewer: Dr. Niladri Chatterjee, University of Kalyani Language Editor: Prof. Sharmila Majumdar, University of Kalyani About the module: This module has the famous “I Have a Dream’ speech of Martin Luther King Jr. as its subject. It discusses in detail about the specific context out of which it emerged, the issues that had been talked about, the literary devices that had been used to attend certain ends and lastly about both immediate and long term impact it had upon the minds of the audience and on the course of the history of American civil right movement. Apart from this the module also offers a very short personal background of Martin Luther King Jr. and his contribution to the American civil right movement. I HAVE A DREAM About Matin Luther King Jr. :- The most acclaimed African-American leader of his era, Martin Luther king Jr. came into this world on 15th January,1929 in Atlanta - a rural area of Georgia, America as the middle child of Michael King Sr. And Alberta Williams King. He was named as Michael King Jr. initially but later following his father’s footsteps, who was a successful Baptist minister and had adopted the name Martin Luther King Sr to pay his homage to renowned German Protestant religious reformer Martin Luther, he too adopted the name Martin Luther King Jr. In between 1935 to 1944, he had attended David T. Howard Elementary school, Atlanta University Laboratory School and Booker T. Washington High School Morehouse College in Atlanta. As a student he was not highly motivated and his family’s close association with church and religious worshipping had not much influence upon his young mind. To be precise, he was quite sceptical about religion in general and about highly emotional spectacles of religious worship in particular. But a Bible class had ushered a radical change in his approach towards religion and he finally took up the career as a minister much to his father’s delight. At the very early stage of his career as a Baptist minister he undertook the journey of becoming a civil right activist after being shaken by witnessing the segregation of black African-American people in contemporary American Society. His awe-inspiring oratory skills, his unyielding determination to fight against all sort of injustice meted out to the black people on the basis of racial profiling, and his uncompromising courage coupled with exemplary leadership expertise, helped him to earn a place in the history of America as one of best orator, preacher and humanitarian civil right activist. Life of this exceptional leader was cut short with his assassination on 4th April,1968 in Memphis, Tennessee leaving millions of people over the entire globe in utter shock and grief. His activities as a civil right activist: Montgomery Bus Boycott: In 1955, Martin Luther King called for an all out boycott of city buses in Montgomery, Alabama and had led the movement which was aimed and toppling down the unfair law that did not allow the black people to sit in the front seats of the buses and even forced them to surrender their seats to whites. Though King Jr. and his followers were jailed, the boycott did succeed in changing the horrendously racial law allowing such segregation. This outright success of the civil right movement of that time garnered overwhelming public reaction and Martin Luther King Jr. marched into national scenario. time aboard the buses was changed. This was a straight-out success for the civil rights movement of the time, and gained national attention. Birmingham mass demonstration: Martin Luther King Jr. was chief architect of one another peaceful mass demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 that was subjected to brutal repression where police dogs had been let loose and fire hoses had been used creating a worldwide controversy and securing strong media coverage subsequently. The mass demonstration in many communities that followed ultimately resulted in the crucial march attended by 2,50,000 people to Washington DC where Martin Luther King Jr delivered his immortal speech titled as “I have a dream”. The very fact that the Congress was forced to enact the Civil Rights Act in 1964, actually speaks in volume about the intensity and ultimate success of the the demonstration. King Jr. himself was awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize in the same year. Memphis Sanitation Worker Strike: It is the strike that was started and carried out primarily by 1300 black sanitation workers of Memphis in 1968. The strike continued for 64 days and gradually shaped into one prominent civil right event. Martin Luther King Jr. came to express his full solidarity and spoke in the second march asking for abolishing discrimination, higher wages, and recognition of their union. The strike ultimately ended on 12th April, 1968 when the city of Memphis accepted their demands. The chain of such intense demonstrations one after another were indeed highly successful and manifested in the forms of following path breaking legislation: Civil Rights Act of 1964 - banning discrimination in employment and public accommodations on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin. Voting Rights Act of 1965 - prohibiting any sort of racial discrimination in voting and securing the right of the racial minorities to vote . Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965 - allowing immigration from groups other than those from the traditional European countries. Fair Housing Act of 1968 - prohibiting discrimination pertaining to the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin and sex. Context and nature of the speech: As discussed early, the famous speech speech had been delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1963 march on in Washington and in front of the Lincoln Memorial for Job and Freedom of the black Americans. 2,50,000 people participated in the march to make it as one of the most largest civil rights demonstrations in the history of America. While interacting with the reporter in 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. himself clarified that the march “will have a two fold purpose… to arouse the conscience of the nation on the economic plight of the Negro one hundred years after the emancipation Proclamation and to demand strong forthright civil right legislation” (Hansen 16). The announcement of this march generated two entirely opposite kind of reaction among the residents of Washington. While one group of people were worried about the possible outcome of unprecedented violence and sheer lawlessness because of their racially charged assumption that most of black Afro-American are uneducated and brutish, the other group was totally against such apprehension. Interestingly the then President F. Kennedy himself represented that other group and described the march as a “peaceful assembly calling for the redress of grievances” (Hansen 30). These two opposite viewpoints were two important aspects that decided the nature of King’s speech. He decided not to exclude the white people (as an ally in their fight) at the expanse of validating the fear of the former group. On the other hand he was little emotionally aggressive too both in choices of sentences and style of delivery for catalysing the much needed action for inflicting a positive change in the sphere of economic, social and political rights of the black Americans. The process of the composition of the speech: By 1963, King was already a praise worthy orator with almost 10 years of experience of public speaking as a religious preacher. But given the fact that this particular speech was in no way similar to his previously delivered religious sermons in terms of both audience and intensity, King (with his advisers) had to put considerable effort in drafting the speech. In addition to that the 5 minutes time slot (though he took around 17 minutes to deliver the speech) given to him also demanded much effort for condensing the highly important subject matter. It took four days of backbreaking intellectual labour for King’s team to prepare the final draft of the prepared and proposed speech which was submitted on the day of the historic march. Departure from the proposed and submitted speech: However it should also be noted that King followed the prepared draft only up to a certain point and after that he had totally abandoned the draft at his hand during the speech. The last 7 minutes of the speech was King’s spontaneous creation and in fact the famous refrain “I have a dream” appeared in that portion of the speech only, not in the prepared and submitted draft. In a 1963 interview with Donald Smith, King revealed the reason behind this departure. He said: I started out reading the speech, and I read it down to a point, and just all of a sudden, I decided- the audience response was wonderful that day, you know- and all of a sudden this thing came to me that I have used- I’d used many times before, that thing about “I have a dream”- and I just felt that I wanted to use it here. I don’t know why. I hadn’t thought about it before the speech. (Hansen 95) It is clear from King’s statement that the refrain ‘I have a Dream’ was one of the ‘set-pieces’ which are memorized passages, Bible verses, sayings etc. which are used by the preachers for delivering religious sermons and it can easily be said that the use of this particular ‘set-piece’ was the outcome of King’s urge to connect with the audience more acutely on the basis of their response.