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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in I Have a Dream Speech, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
America’s Promises and Potential
The Collective Fight Against Racism
Dreams, Despair, and Faith
The Uses of Nonviolent Resistance
Summary
Analysis
Martin Luther King Jr. announces how proud he is to be at the March on Washington—a rally that he believes will be remembered forever as “the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of [the United States].”
Martin Luther King is addressing an audience of 250,000 at the 1963 March on Washington. Though King had delivered versions of this speech to smaller gatherings over the last year or so, the March on Washington was unprecedented in scope. It turned out to be one of the largest and most iconic protests in American history, a show of strength in the fight against racism and an inspiration to many Americans to fight to live up to their country’s potential.
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“Five score” (or one hundred) years ago, Abraham Lincoln—a great American whose “symbolic shadow” looms over the rally in the form of the Lincoln Memorial—signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This was a historic order that offered hope to millions of enslaved Black Americans. The Proclamation was seen as a “joyous daybreak” at the end of a “long night of […] captivity.”
King delivered his address from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which looks out on the National Mall and the Washington Monument. So not only were he and the protestors at the March on Washington standing literally in Lincoln’s shadow—they were also standing metaphorically in the shadow of the actions he took to end slavery. King telegraphs this to his audience by essentially quoting the opening lines of Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address, which began: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Looking at King’s speech through the lens of sermon structure (he was a preacher, after all), Lincoln’s words could be viewed as the sermon’s epigraph (typically a Bible verse that the sermon goes on to analyze). Here, the epigraph is the words of Lincoln, who is renowned and praised for his role in ending slavery, although the speech will go on to examine all the work left to be done to create true equality.
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Though the Emancipation Proclamation ended the institution of slavery, Black Americans still aren’t truly free. Over a century later, the “manacles of segregation” and the “chains of discrimination” still keep Black people in America yoked to the burdens of racism and injustice.
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Black Americans live on a “lonely island of poverty” in the middle of a vast ocean of prosperity. They are ostracized even in their own country.
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The attendees at the March on Washington have come to the capital “to cash a check.” The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were “promissory note[s]” to every American—Black and white—entitling them to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But America has “defaulted” on this note and given Black Americans a bad check—a check that has come back marked “insufficient funds.” King refuses to believe that, in the “great vaults” of American opportunity, there are not sufficient funds to bestow “the riches of freedom” unto all Americans.
King wants to remind the whole of America of the “urgency” of the moment. There is no time left for taking things slowly; the promises of American democracy—including justice—must be a reality “for all God’s children” right away.
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The “sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent” must come to an end, ushering in an “invigorating autumn” of justice and equity. Until Black Americans receive equal rights, there will be no peace in America. It is time for a revolt to “shake the foundation” of the country.
But to everyone fighting for justice, King warns, there can be no violence or hatred in the civil rights movement—dignity and discipline must prevail in “creative protests,” and demonstrations must never descend into physical violence. King urges his listeners to meet “physical force with soul force” and remain in the “majestic heights” of righteous nonviolent resistance no matter the provocation.
King applauds “the marvelous new militancy” among Black Americans—but at the same time, he urges his audience not to begin harboring a distrust of all white people. Many white Americans have realized that their fates are tied to the fates of Black Americans—the freedoms of both groups are “inextricably bound,” and neither race can “walk alone.”
As these groups walk together, they must vow to march ahead and never look back. There can be no satisfaction in any part of America until Black Americans are no longer victimized by police, until they are allowed to enjoy the same accommodations as white Americans, and until they have full social mobility. Until “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream,” the movement for equality must not stop.
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King dreams that some day, the sons of former slaves and former slave-owners will be able to join together as brothers. He dreams that places like Mississippi, though currently “sweltering with the heat of injustice,” will soon become cool oases of freedom.
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King dreams that in his home state of Alabama, where he lives with his family, the “vicious racists” there will lose political and social power. He dreams that one day, even in a place as racist as Alabama, “little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”
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King dreams that valleys will be “exalted” and mountains brought low, that what’s rough will be smoothed and what’s crooked will be made straight. He dreams that all of humanity will see the “glory of the Lord.”
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King’s dream gives him the faith to return to the South and continue fighting to craft “a stone of hope” out of a mountain of despair. It is his faith in a dream of a better America that he hopes will inspire everyone in attendance to work together and fight together until all of them are free.
King hopes that soon, “all of God’s children” will be able to sing Samuel Francis Smith’s patriotic hymn “America (My Country, ‘Tis of Thee)” with new meaning. America cannot truly be “great” until every American can wholeheartedly sing the most iconic words of that song: “let freedom ring.”
King calls out for America to “let freedom ring” all across the nation—from the hilltops and “mighty mountains” of the Northeast, to the snowy, curvaceous slopes of the West. He also calls for freedom to ring out from “every hill and molehill” of the South.
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Once these calls for freedom ring out across the nation, the country will be one step closer to the day when “all of God’s children,” regardless of their race or religion, will be able to join hands and sing the words of an “old Negro spiritual”: “Free at last, free at last; thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”
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