Martin Luther King Jr. an American clergyman and Nobel laureate was one of the principal leaders of the American civil rights movement and a prominent advocate of nonviolent resistance to racial oppression. One of his speeches, usually called the ôI Have a Dreamö speech because of a line that he repeated as a motif throughout, has become one of the best-known, most-often quoted and most inspirational speeches given by any American in the 20th century, in part because of his eloquent and impassioned delivery of it, in part because it contained within it a glimpse of nearly every one of the issues within Civil Rights that he fought for during his life. This paper examines how the ôI Have a Dreamö speech gave indications into King's philosophy and strategy for achieving social change.
A brief description of King's life and his achievements will provide useful background, for specific incidents and experiences in his life are reflected in the speech, as shall be noted.
King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929, the eldest son of Martin Luther King, Sr., a Baptist minister, and Alberta Williams King. He entered Morehouse College at the age of 15 and was ordained a Baptist minister at the age of 17. Graduating from Crozer Theological Seminary as class president in 1951, he then did postgraduate work at Boston University.
King's studies at Crozer and Boston led him to explore the works of the Indian nationalist Mohandas K. Gandhi, whose ideas became the core of his own philosophy of nonviolent protest. While in Boston, he met Coretta Scott of Marion, Alabama. They were married in June 1953, and the following year King accepted an appointment as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama (Pauley, 1998, p. 322).
That same year the Supreme Court of the United States outlawed all segregated public education, and in the wake of that decision the segregated South was soon challenged in every area ...