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David S. Kaufer examines why Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech commands such power over our imagination

Sunday, January 19, 2003

In 1999, two professors of communication, one from the University of Wisconsin and one from Texas A&M, surveyed communication experts nationwide to rank the 100 greatest speeches of the 20th century. The designers of the survey (www.news.wisc.edu/-misc/speeches) defined "greatness" as a combination of artistic merit and social impact. The experts ranked Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech as No. 1.

		David S. Kaufer is head of the English Department at Carnegie Mellon University. He specializes in writing and rhetorical theory and also serves on a university subcommittee on staff diversity. His e-mail is kaufer@andrew.cmu.edu. "I Have a Dream" text

While we can't enter the minds of each of the raters to understand why they collectively ranked as they did, we can reflect a bit on "I Have a Dream" in relation to some of the top competitors of the century to understand what made King's speech distinctive.

First, and foremost, the speech is about the future. This is not exactly a surprise, for King's speech is frequently described as prophetic, beckoning audiences to fulfill the promise set down in the Declaration of Independence. What may be more surprising is that so many great speeches of the 20th century do not dwell on the future. They instead react to the circumstances of the day.

Reminiscent of the recent outpouring after 9/11, great speeches of the 20th century have reacted to unimaginable infamy (FDR's Pearl Harbor Address, ranked fourth) and tragedy (Reagan's Address on the Challenger Disaster, ranked eighth). In such horrific contexts, audiences seek reassurance and restoration more than a clarified vision of the future. Great speeches may also respond to events of significant political magnitude (Barbara Jordan's statement at the Nixon impeachment proceedings, ranked 13th), or to smaller moments the magnitude of which is proven only in hindsight (Nixon's Checkers speech, ranked sixth).

King's closest competitor for greatness did address the future, and from the vantage of a new generation of leaders just coming of age ("But let us begin."). John F. Kennedy's inaugural address (ranked second) defined the 1960s as a time in which "the torch [had] been passed to a new generation of Americans -- born in this century." In Kennedy's time, the future was framed by an uncertain America still hopeful that nations with the power to decide would decide against the Iron Curtain for the free world.

The future in "I Have a Dream" is not the uncertain future Kennedy anticipated from the present but a fully disclosed destiny used to judge the present. The speech in this sense added to a line of efforts to define America's mission statement.

Through history, American leaders have circulated only a few drafts of such a mission statement. Revisions have come slowly. The Declaration promised equality but only a formal equality that left slavery untouched. Lincoln's lasting contribution was to understand how slavery had driven a stake through our national mission statement, tearing the country into a "House Divided." Lincoln insisted that all loopholes that had left slavery a silently tolerated practice be closed.

However, despite his lifelong hatred for slavery, Lincoln harbored the position that black Americans are not the social equals of whites. He makes this position abundantly clear in the first debate with Douglas at Ottawa, Ill., where in his first rejoinder to Douglas, the man who would become the Great Emancipator insists that, "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races." Lincoln freed the slaves but never recanted his position on the social inferiority of black Americans.

Malcolm X exposed this lingering contradiction in the national mission statement when he argued to his black audiences that they could not dismiss the bullet as an alternative to the ballot (Speech on "The Ballot or the Bullet," ranked seventh).

While Malcolm focused tactically against tensions that have never healed, King focused strategically on updating a national mission statement for the 20th century. King's "I Have a Dream" added the idea of full social equality for all into the American future.

While King is often criticized for being too accommodating to white America, "I Have a Dream" did, and continues to do, all that a good mission statement can do. It defines public discourse about a collective future and it marginalizes discourse that competes for different futures.

Lincoln complained that he was born into a world where no one was allowed to criticize slavery in public. By the time he left the world, Lincoln had made it a little harder for ordinary citizens to defend slavery in public. King was born into a world where few whites dared to take a public stand in favor of full social and economic equality for Blacks.

After "I Have a Dream," it became a little harder for ordinary citizens to pass their bigotry into the national discourse unchecked.

Just two years after "I Have a Dream," President Lyndon Johnson used King-inspired oratory (the "We Shall Overcome" speech, ranked 10th) to promote civil rights legislation. Johnson claimed in that speech: "There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem." Johnson was already framing the problem of social relations in words that "I Have a Dream" first framed.

Great speech is artistic and creates social change. But the greatest speech changes the terms of public discourse itself. "I Have a Dream" accomplished that. With recent challenges to affirmative action and with the growing understanding that the victims of social, economic and legal inequality are not only black Americans, we are still searching for effective policies to implement the national mission statement (of social equality for all) that "I Have a Dream" crystallized.

But we should not confuse the unfinished details of the project King clarified and the impressive fact that we find ourselves pretty much taking for granted the American future he defined.