I Have a Dream

"I have a dream," said Martin Luther King Jr. earlier today on Washington. In front of the Lincoln Memorial, an impassioned King delivered a speech on equal rights to an interracial crowd that waited with an expectant silence.
   "I have a dream," King said. "That one day this nation will rise up, living out the true meaning of its creed. We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
   The crowd watched King with a revered silence. There were whoops and cheers closer to the podium as King delivered ideas and concepts on freedom for blacks previously foreign to this nation.
  The Civil Rights Movement has been an open-and-shut case since its start in 1955. Whites have given blacks small degrees of freedom. Today, there are segregated schools and public bathrooms. But blacks want more than an end to physical slavery. They want an end to racist differentiation.
  King spoke on a few major themes to emphasize the importance of freedom for all men. His biggest theme is change--now.
   "There's no time to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism," he said. There were cheers from the audience. "It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment."
   King was met with an interracial audience of whites and blacks alike. Upon moving to his podium, King was among the singing and hopeful crowd. King knew his speech would have a resonating ring within history.
  King used different techniques to speak to his audiences. He made sure to incorporate specific names of state within in the nation, like Colorado, California, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. He spoke, not about abstract concepts, but about physical realities represented in the disjointed nation.
   He made sure to mention the more racist states, like Alabama, as examples for the worse-off Negros in that part of the country. There was true pity and concern for his nation in every word he delivered in his 20 minute speech.
   King also referred to the changes made throughout U.S. history, and his sorrow for how little the nation has moved forward. He referenced Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.
   "But 100 years later," King said, "the Negro still is not free."
    King also spoke with great admiration towards the U.S. Constitution, which speaks of unalienable rights between all men created equal. With a heavy sorrow, King noted that America neglected its brothers.
  "This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," King said of the Constitution. "Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'"
    King highlighted the injustices to blacks. He spoke of Mississippi men, negro children, and the injustice of growing up in a nation that sees people of color as inferior. As a black civil rights activist, King knows first-hand the injustices done to blacks.
   He wants a better life for his future brothers and sisters, white and black alike.
   King, unlike many the nation he refers to in his heated speech, gives the appearance that he understands how people are created equal.
   "Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children," King said, uniting the nation under God.
   As King spoke to his listeners, he became inflamed with a passion to change the course of history. When at first he appeared nervous and obligated to speak about the political upheaval and the injustice, by the end of the speech, he wore a new face. One of hope, one of true compassion for a nation he believed needed to change face.
   King made it a point to speak of effected generations. It's not just white and black adults that are affected by the injustice, but children, too. When King spoke of his own children's lives being affected, his voice grew softer. His eyes lifted.
  "I have a dream," King said. "That my four little children will one day live in a nation where they are not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
   King wants freedom. Not just for himself, not just for people of color, but for the entire nation. He wants unison in a country that is divided amongst racial bias.
  He left the podium with a tall stature. His booming voice echoed through the microphone as he walked off the stage with the final hopeful cheer, "Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"