I Have a Dream: Situational Analysis - Assignment Example

114020 When I took up the cross, I recognized its meaning.. The cross is something that you bear, And ultimately that you die on. Martin LutherKing Jr. May 22, 1967, Penn Community center, Frogmore, South Carolina. (Garrow, 1988). The historical speech, "I have a dream" was delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the peaceful warrior, and Baptist Minister, on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King Jr., the leader of civil rights of the Black American community, later the Nobel Peace prizewinner, was the main motivator behind the fight for equality between the white and black community of America. After the civil war during the days of Abraham Lincoln, the then President of America, King's was the most important voice that was heard in favor of the civil rights. He was the driving force behind the Anti race discrimination movement in the 1950s and 1960s. This was the most famous speech he ever made which almost immortalized him. Dr. King, even to this day, remains an icon of anti racist movement. The rhetoric "I have a dream" became part of all the freedom movements to come and his words "Let freedom ring" reverberated from all corners of the world, as a sanctified slogan of freedom loving humankind. The rhetorical situation had many constraints at the time. Even though it was John Kennedy, one of the most exalted Presidents of America, the sworn enemy of racism, Kennedy had realized that it would take years to remove the evil from its roots. He was a new President, still testing the water of American politics and was not yet ready for a civil war like situation with the racial frenzy South. Things had not changed much from the days of Abe Lincoln. President Kennedy had to send federal troops to admit James Meredith to the University of Mississippi, in 1962, the very thing he really wanted to avoid. The President also had to order the marshals to accompany Meredith while attending his University Classes. King knew that in Kennedy he had a sympathizer and now it is known that Kennedy had already decided to do a lot for the rights of the black population, during his second term as President. But in 1963, even Kennedy was not in a position to do much to aid King. King knew that he had to fight his own battles, possibly with subtle help from the President and his Attorney General brother, Robert Kennedy. King's first task was generating support from the Black Community. There were a few fractions fighting for the civil liberty in an unorganized way. He knew that their strength lies in unity and undivided, fractionless black community. He knew that unless he did that, the movement had no chance of success. He also knew that President Kennedy's assassination in 1963 and the aspiring Presidential candidate, Robert Kennedy's murder in 1967, had removed any hope of administrative support for the movement, and the mild, rather wily successor, Lyndon Johnson never showed any such intention either by word or deed. King had to depend on his own rhetoric, wit, oratory and determination to make a success of the fight for civil liberties. This entire speech, its timing, location was towards that one particular goal. He had to enthuse and inspire them ('Let freedom ring'), explain and get them committed ('We cannot turn back'), and make them march with him towards the glittering goal of 'Free at last!' His eloquent speech was interrupted many times by the admiring frenzy of the audience that is the result of great purpose and happiness of having found a suitably inspiring leader at last for the cause. The rhetoric produced both short term and long-term effects. For the first time in recent decades black community of America was maintaining a united struggle for their rights under an able leadership. The long-term effect was that the Blacks remained united for many more decades, under leaders like Jesse Jackson, in a very peaceful (Satyagraha, or passive and peaceful resistance popularized by M.K. Gandhi, the Indian leader, whom King adored) way and even the death of King did not stop them from their goal. American Presidents, for once, heeded Lincoln's warning that the country could not continue to stay half free and half enslaved, brought rule after rule, measure after measure, till all the discriminatory evidences for wiped off from the national scene, and equality in society, community and all institutions got established. Today, America is a proud nation with equality, fraternity and liberty. King used the non-violent struggle for the first time in Western countries, which Gandhi had used in India, to release the country from British yoke. King was impressed by Mahatma Gandhi. He was particularly struck by Gandhi's words: "Through our pain we will make them see their injustice". http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkingML.htm King established himself as the national leader of the civil rights movement and launched on protests and boycotts in the South. It was a test to the patience of the blacks, King's followers; but he tried to keep them nonviolent, in the presence of unbridled provocation. South, from the days of Abraham Lincoln had been against the discontinuation of slavery. They started the Civil War at enormous price for the whole nation and forced the President to send his troops against half of his own country. In all the following decades, they had not changed much. King made the Voting Rights the first demand and protests were staged across the nation and the responses of his opponents were slowly attaining violent fervor. Just before his assassination in 1968, King had opposed the Vietnamese War. "Any number of historic moments in the civil rights struggle have been used to identify Martin Luther King, Jr. - prime mover of the Montgomery bus boycott, keynote speaker at the March on Washington, youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate. But in retrospect, single events are less important than the fact that King, and his policy of non-violent protest, was the dominant force in the civil rights movement during its decade of greatest achievement, from 1957 to 1968" http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/mlk/king/biography.html In 1957, he became the president of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and by then, he had already become a national hero, with the Supreme Court declaring that the bus segregation was unconstitutional. He found himself helping all communities to organize their own anti-racist movements. Performers, music stars, intellectuals, clergy, students and social workers, at home and abroad all joined the cause of black freedom. No doubt he was trying to create a new world order, but he was also trying to create it through peaceful means. He avoided direct confrontation, and like Gandhi, he knew that the ordinary, humble, poor folks, who supported him, could not face the strength of Government's hostile machinery. He led a huge number of downtrodden and desperate Americans and knew that they could ill-afford to continue the struggle indefinitely, or conduct it through violent means. From his prison cell, he wrote how the American Presidents after Lincoln remained passive to the problem. "It reminds us that Lincoln's was the strongest measure ever to come from an American president, one that altered the economy, liberated an enslaved race, and helped shape a momentous social revolution. The Lincoln precedent should have inspired subsequent presidents to complete the process of emancipation, King said," Oates, (1982, 208). In the face of such inactivity by the all-powerful American Presidents, it took a Martin Luther King Jr. to make a powerful speech, reverberating with its demand for freedom, which he ends with: "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 a table of brotherhood". http://www.mecca.org/crights/dream.html His wife, Loretta, paying him rich tributes, in her book, closes it with the following eulogy: "I close by saying to you what Martin Luther King, Jr., believed, that if physical death was the price he had to pay to rid America of prejudice and injustice, nothing could be more redemptive," King, (1969, p.371). He was a unique person, whose short life was focused on the problem on hand and today, he has become an institution, a permanent symbol of anti-racism, anti-slavery and anti-discrimination. He knew of the danger he was courting, and was imperious to it. "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a vital personality of the modern era. His lectures and remarks stirred the concern and sparked the conscience of a generation; the movements and marches he led brought significant changes in the fabric of American life; his courageous and selfless devotion gave direction to thirteen years of civil rights activities; his charismatic leadership inspired men and women, young and old, in the nation and abroad", http://www.lib.lsu.edu/hum/mlk/srs218.html He had a strong sense of timing, drama and practicability. He knew that he had to use the language of everyday practical parlance to make Blacks to understand, keeping their education and poverty level in mind. He was also aware that desire for equality and freedom was almost dead among blacks, owing to centuries of slavery. In this speech, he said, "In a sense we have 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"http://www.mecca.org/crights/dream.html He spoke about the cheque the Negroes received that had been returned for "insufficient funds" from the Bank. When he died, it was the death of a dream. But the following words with which he ended his "I have a dream" speech have become immortal. "When we let 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!" http://www.mecca.org/crights/dream.html BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Frank, Gerold (1972), An American Death, Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York. 2. Garrow, David J. (1988), Bearing the Cross, Vintage Books, New York. 3. King, Coretta Scott (1969), My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr., Hodder and Stoughton, London. 4. Oates, Stephen B. (1982), Let the Trumpet Sound, The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr., Harper & Row, Publishers, New York. ONLINE SOURCES: 1. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/mlk/king/biography.html 2. http://www.mecca.org/crights/dream.html 3. http://www.lib.lsu.edu/hum/mlk/srs218.html 4. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkingML.htm 5. http://www.mecca.org/crights/dream.html 6. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/mlk/ Read More