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Martin Luther King Let Freedom Ring

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Let freedom ring
Imagine a time when whites and blacks were required to utilize different water fountains, out of fear that if white people used one that black people had used they would contract some type of disease. Imagine a time when whites and blacks could not attend school together, which more often than not resulted in an efficient education for whites, and a deficient education for blacks. Imagine a time when in Mississippi it was considered illegal for one to advocate for social equality between whites and blacks (Stonaker). Although it may be hard to believe for some this was not a part of their imagination but rather a reality. For some they faced these injustices on the daily. Since the beginning of time African Americans had …show more content…

After President Kennedy openly condemned racial injustices, civil rights activists proposed a March on Washington as their best chance of success. On August 28, 1963 over 250,000 civil rights supporters gathered at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC to combat these discriminations. This is where Martin Luther King Jr. presented his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, which would truly be a changing point in the American civil rights movement. King projected his speech across the surroundings of the Lincoln memorial in hopes to empower all African Americans to strive for equality and justice without violence and remain hopeful despite the inequalities faced in the past. King occupies an urgent yet hopeful tone in addressing his fellow civil rights activists, and America as a whole. In doing so, King exerts different rhetorical choices such as anaphora which can be seen in his repetition of the phrases “I have a dream”, and “let freedom ring”, metaphors such as comparing African Americans to banking, and their protesting to thirst, and by alluding to both old African American folk songs and an American favorite, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”, to help attain to his purpose and instill a hopeful outlook for all

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