“I Have a Dream” is a seventeen-minute speech considered to be one of the greatest in the twentieth century. The speech was delivered at Lincoln Memorial for the occasion of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In this case, the speaker, Dr. Martin Luther King, was an activist who was against racial discrimination. The social contest of the speech was during the time when there was a lot of racial discrimination against one community. This community was fighting for its rights for the purpose of stopping racial discrimination. What led to this speech was the need for this community, the blacks, to have equal rights with the whites.
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The speaker used to command respect in the community. He gave his life to the black community to fight for their rights. What proves his credibility is the fact that he has come publicly speaking up for the community endangering his life. At that time, those who were going against the majority community, the whites, became targets of violence. In addition, the speaker is extremely credible, because he was not fighting for the rights of people for his own personal gains but the overall gain of the black community. Finally, he is an ethical leader, because he is not advocating for violence but for peace between the two communities. Therefore, this shows that he was an extremely ethical leader who believed in the rights of all people.
The speaker uses pathos as he can attract the crowd by using their emotions. The speaker can tap the emotions of the crowd by showing them that he is also a part of them, and he is suffering the same consequences. In this case, he is telling them that he has a dream that one day they are going to achieve equality among all communities. In this case, the speaker is persuading the crowd due to the emotional attachments he has with people.
In the speech, the speaker is using logic, or logos, to persuade the crowd in believing him in the fight for their rights. In this case, he argues that the blacks are continuously mistreated even after one hundred years of gaining independence. He begins by stating that the life of the blacks is still miserable. In addition, he continues to state that everybody is equal. Therefore, blacks should have equal rights as whites. For this reason, the speaker is using many logos to persuade the crowd in fighting for their rights.
There are two groups of an audience listening to the speech. The first group is the black community. In this case, the speaker is trying to urge the black community to come together and fight for their rights. On the other hand, the speaker is reaching out to the white community who are racially discriminating the blacks. He is trying to show the white community that the blacks are also humans like them. Therefore, they should change the laws of the country to accommodate the rights of the black community.
The speech is considered by many scholars and historians across the world to be the greatest speech of all time. This is because Dr. Martin Luther King was able to gather a large crowd in the aim of fighting for their rights despite the critics from the whites. Secondly, the speaker was not advocating violence to fight for their rights. Instead, he was advocating peace and equality among different parties. After the speech, all the parties were persuaded, and all the demands were met by the two parties.