Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have A Dream” Speech
Term Paper:
This course will have a very strong emphasis on writing. In fact, it is almost a hybrid “History/Composition” course. There will be one term paper for this course.
The student will select one of the primary source documents from the “Primary Source Document Readings Collection,” and write a 1,200 word term paper analysis of it,
as described below.
In this term paper, the student will answer, in essay format, the thesis questions I have written for the primary source document he or she selects. I suggest you
choose the primary source document that you find most interesting. Please see the summary descriptions of each primary source document in the “Primary Source Document
Readings Collection” to see what each primary source document is about.
To write your paper you will need background historical information. Since this is a freshman class, I do not expect you to be able to undertake sophisticated
research. However, you should be able to obtain readily available information for your historical background and context from such sources as the recorded lectures,
the class notes, Wikipedia, “Google” internet searches (if the material comes from a university website [.edu]), and so on. These are called “secondary sources.” No
more than thirty percent of your paper should be based on secondary sources, either from the internet or from the introductions that I wrote for each reading. Seventy
percent or more of your paper should be directly based on your own analysis of the primary source reading document you have chosen to analyze.
The Primary Source Documents includes speeches, essays, poems, and excerpts from books. Some of the documents include an entire speech or essay. However, other
documents are excerpts from books. In those documents, I have chosen only a “scene” or section of a book, rather than the whole book. If you choose one of those
documents to write your paper on, you are to concentrate your essay on analyzing the excerpt I give you, not the entire book it comes from. In other words, your paper
cannot be on The Grapes of Wrath, but only on that section of The Grapes of Wrath I give you. Since some of these excerpts may require a greater degree of background
contextualization than present in the introduction I provide, you may read summaries of the book from which the excerpt is taken. You may include information from
these summaries in your paper. However, analogous to the requirement specified in the above paragraph, seventy percent of the discussion in your paper must be based
directly on the excerpt I have provided you; only a maximum of thirty percent of your discussion may come from summaries of the book from which your excerpt was taken,
or from other secondary sources of information, to provide historical context. Here is a hypothetical example. Say that I have provided you with a 10 page excerpt
from a 300 page book. Your essay should be about 1200 words. That means that 840 words in your essay must be focused directly on the 10 page excerpt. Only 360 words
may discuss the remainder of the book.
Some of the Primary Source Documents are very short. You may find it very difficult to write a 1200 word paper based on such a short document without essentially
repeating yourself, dwelling on insignificant details, etc. If you fear that might become the case, please chose a different, longer Primary Source Document to write
your paper on. As you will learn, repetition of the same idea, even without using the same words, will reduce your paper grade. In many cases, it is harder to write a
good paper on a short document than on a longer document.
Please make sure to read carefully the “model term paper” in the contents section of the Blackboard course website. This shows you what an “A” paper could look like.
Specifications: Papers must have a clear thesis statement, an introduction, a well-organized body with clear topic sentences and supporting evidence (appropriate
paraphrasing or short quotations from the document), and a well stated conclusion. Please see my grammar and composition rules guide on the Blackboard website for this
course for further information.
I will indicate each problem on the first version of your paper, including grammar, composition, logic, strength of analysis, reasonable and interpretation of the
document. I will also provide you with a grammar and composition guide to help you understand what the problem is, and how to correct it. You will then re-write your
paper, and submit the new version (version 2) to me for grading. The second version will be graded in the same manner as the first, and returned to you. You will then
re-write that version, and submit the new version (version 3) to me for grading.
Papers must be double spaced; Times Roman 12 font. Each page must be numbered in the bottom right hand corner.
PRIMARY SOURCE:
Reading 29: Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have A Dream” Speech
This is Martin Luther King’s most famous speech, emphasizing his hopes for a future of racial equality.
Reading 29: Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have A Dream” Speech
Introduction:
In the spring of 1963, a bomb attack on a church that killed four African American children and the brutal fashion in which police handled black demonstrators brought
the nation’s attention to the policies of racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. A few months later, on August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. led a march on
Washington, D.C., and gave an inspired speech at the Lincoln Memorial that catalyzed the civil rights movement.
Thesis questions:
Martin Luther King Jr. was known as a highly skilled and moving orator. What are some of the rhetorically effective elements in this speech? What was “gradualism”?
What are the positive images of the future King uses? Why would they have appealed to his listeners? How did African Americans feel about this speech? White
Americans? What impact did this speech have on the Civil Rights Movement?
Text:
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon
light of hope to millions of Negro slaves, who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their
captivity.
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 in exile in his own land….
So we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we’ve 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. This note
was the 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.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note in so far as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation,
America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is
bankrupt….
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the
tranquilizing drug of gradualism. 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. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment….
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the
table of brotherhood…. 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….
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this
faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to
pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. And this will be the day. This
will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father
died, land of the pilgrims’ pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true….
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to 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.”
From William J. Duiker and Jackson J. Spielvogel, World History 5th ed. Vol. II; Since 1500, Thomson Wadsworth, 2007, p. 792.
