Before Martin Luther King Jr. became famous for his “I Have a Dream” speech during the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” in August 1963, he was first and foremost a preacher. This has more bearing on the repetition that he used in his “I Have a Dream” speech than most realize.
One of the most well-known, repetitive passages of his speech was a section about his dream for the future.
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed…I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners 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.”
Dr. King was familiar with the pastoral style. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all preachers. Since most people do not bring their Bibles and notebooks to church, part of a pastor’s job is to ensure that those attending services remember the words being spoken. This is accomplished through repeating plain, clear words that can be understood by an audience of almost every grade level.
As a pastor, Dr. King harnessed the power of repetition, which is also found throughout the Bible from which he preached, and especially in the Psalms, which are a list of songs recorded by the Old Testament’s King David that praise God by using the same refrain many times over.
Songs often use the technique of repetition to help those who sing them remember them. The “I have a dream” mantra was no different, and as such, even to this day when people hear it, those four powerful words ring as more of a refrain from a song than a phrase of a speech.
By using repetition throughout his speech, Dr. King also hearkened to songs that many African Americans of that time would have understood, which were called “Negro Spirituals.” (At that time, African-Americans were called negroes, a term which is no longer used due to its political incorrectness.) In many instances, these songs had refrains that repeated one specific mantra, such as “We Will Overcome,” which states:
“We shall overcome, we shall overcomeWe shall overcome some dayOh, deep in my heart, I do believeWe shall overcome some day.”
This style would, therefore, have been familiar to those looking to his leadership for comfort and encouragement. The technique would have also served as an effective a call to action, as the paragraph below, demonstrates.
“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 quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood; now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.”
Another passage in which Dr. King used repetition was when he conveyed that devotees of the Civil Rights movement should not be satisfied until certain conditions were met.
“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 selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”; we cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote, and the 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.”
At the end of his speech, Dr. King chose to again use repetition to close his speech by stating, “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last” to emphasize what he wanted the result to be in the future, and to imprint that dream on the minds of those listening. This was in hopes of not only inspiring them to dream with him, but to help make equal rights a reality for all.
There are many examples of repetition in Martin Luther King Junior's "I Have a Dream" speech. The repetition serves as emphasis. Since the speech was given orally, the repetition also helps the audience comprehend his points. It is often more difficult to just hear information than it is to read or have visual aids, so the repetition helps the audience track with the speech and King's tenets. In the example below, King repeats the phrase "one hundred years later" three times. This serves to highlight the fact that it has been a century since Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves, yet black people were still in a type of bondage.
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.
Perhaps the most famous example of repetition in this speech is the phrase, "I have a dream." King repeats this phrase as he develops an idea of what his dream entails. It becomes a type of anthem as he paints a picture of a country in which there is unity and equality among races.
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!
Another noteworthy example of repetition in this speech is the repeated phrase "let freedom ring." This phrase is repeated 10 times and is a rallying cry. He uses it to proclaim that freedom, as it is expressed in the song "My Country 'Tis of Thee," will only be fully realized when there is equality among all races of people. So he repeats the phrase and calls out many different locations in the country. The locations he mentions span the whole country and creates a cry for unification.
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