King's Dream
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The Legacy of Martin Luther King’s "I Have a Dream" Speech
Eric J. Sundquist
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Format: PaperPrice: $32.00
Paper
A new evaluation of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, renowned speech, now hailed as the most powerful American address of the twentieth century
Includes the entire text of "I Have A Dream"
“I have a dream”—no words are more widely recognized, or more often repeated, than those called out from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963. King’s speech, elegantly structured and commanding in tone, has become shorthand not only for his own life but for the entire civil rights movement. In this new exploration of the “I have a dream” speech, Eric J. Sundquist places it in the history of American debates about racial justice—debates as old as the nation itself—and demonstrates how the speech, an exultant blend of grand poetry and powerful elocution, perfectly expressed the story of African American freedom.
This book is the first to set King’s speech within the cultural and rhetorical traditions on which the civil rights leader drew in crafting his oratory, as well as its essential historical contexts, from the early days of the republic through present-day Supreme Court rulings. At a time when the meaning of the speech has been obscured by its appropriation for every conceivable cause, Sundquist clarifies the transformative power of King’s “Second Emancipation Proclamation” and its continuing relevance for contemporary arguments about equality.
Eric J. Sundquist is UCLA Foundation Professor of Literature, UCLA. He is author or editor of twelve books on American literature and culture, including the award-winning volumes To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature and Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America.
"Sundquist's careful, thoughtful study unearths new and fascinating evidence of the rhetorical traditions in King's speech."—Drew D. Hansen, author of The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Speech that Inspired a Nation
"Each chapter of Sundquist's intelligent and important book focuses on one of several themes in the speech, unpacking the sources of the words and placing them within a broader civil rights context. His last chapter, 'Not by the Color of Their Skin,' is one of the most incisive analyses of the affirmative action debate I have ever read."—Clay Risen, Washington Post Book World
“An insightful and incisive reading of what is probably the most familiar speech ever made by an American. . . illuminating and well-written.”
—Robert Cook, Journal of American HistoryPublication Date: August 25, 2009
16 b/w illus.
