They would be incorrect. The phrase “I have a dream” first appears about halfway into the speech.
What? No. Just no.
It doesn’t. It starts with:
Note the echoing of the GA’s rhetorical device of year counting.
Yes, just carelessness on my part, but it does reflect what most Americans know about the speech. I was trying to convey that it isn’t much, just the catch phrases.
And if you think about it, the speech is much, much more effective with “I Have a Dream” embedded in it rather than at the very beginning. Get the crowd worked up a bit first, then delivery the rhetorical flourish.
King was an exceptional orator as well. We can only guess at what Lincoln sounded like giving his speeches, but I would assume he had developed great skill as a public speaker early in his career.
From what little I know, he was supposed to be great at off-the-cuff lawyering.
And yeah, I think King’s amazing oratory abilities contribute to the speech’s fame. But I’d suggest that there’s a little more that most Americans know about the speech: lines about black children and white people getting along, lines about “Let freedom ring”, maybe even a line or two about promissory notes not honored (but probably not the latter).
As for suggestions that JFK’s Berlin speech might be more famous, that’s amazing to me. Really?
I think it was something important at the time. But it was surpassed by more dramatic events in history, like the death of the guy who gave the speech.
22-year old American here. If you’d asked me I’d have said MLK’s “I have a dream” is far more famous a speech than either the GA or JFK’s Berlin speech.
I think quite a few would know about the “color of their skin/content of their character” thingy.
Really? Seems a bit pessimistic. I’m European and, like Nava, I could tell you “I have a dream”, MLK, and the gist if not much more of the contents. I would say that’d be about the norm for the majority of Europeans. But it could be me who’s optimistic instead.
P.s. It’s also be the first American famous speech I’d name, “Ich bin ein Berliner” would be the second. I would probably have run out of options there, though I recognise the Gettysburgh address as being important now that it has been mentioned, but without googling I’d be shamefully uncertain as to the specifics. :o
So you guys really don’t know that the speech was about how people shouldn’t be racist? I doubt most Americans know much more than that.
I’m not sure most Americans even know what the Gettysburg Address was about. And Kennedy’s speech? I can guess what it was about based on the one line I know, but that’s it. The only reason I even know about it is the urban legend about him calling himself a hotdog.
Psst!
jelly doughnut.
American here, born 1960. We never did “study” the Gettysburg Address in school, and MLK was very big when I was in high school and continues to be an important figure in the culture and in schools today. Still, I thought you were talking about Gettysburg too, and was kind of surprised to find out otherwise.
As for ‘ich bin ein jelly doughnut,’ I’m familiar with that line, and I know the significance of the speech though I couldn’t begin to quote any more of it than that. But I’d agree with some above comments that it’s just not in the same category. I would rank it way below GA and IHAD in terms of its impact, its oratory/poetry/imagery, and its presence in the American DNA of today. I’d actually rank FDR’s Day of Infamy and 4 Freedoms speeches pretty far ahead of the Berlin one, for that matter.
I LOVE the Ain’t I a Woman speech, btw, and wish it were better known.
I think that–while the speech is rhetorically masterful–it has been promoted as his legacy precisely because it’s so propositionally innocuous and empty. I doubt King was killed for the things he said in this particular speech. On the other hand, his evolving beliefs about Vietnam and the role that American capitalism played in the suppression of blacks are ever more conveniently forgotten by the constant replaying of this speech every January.
Continuing my informal poll of people in my office here in Afghanistan:
Afghan (40): JFK, “Ask not…”
Welshman (50): JFK, Berlin speedh
Indonesian (30s): Obama Cairo speech
Canadian here.
I’m not that familiar with MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech. I know that he made it about a hundred years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, and that he made it on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. And I know that it contains the “colour of their skin/content of their character” line.
I am much more familiar with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address; and to a lesser extent, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. I could probably recite the former off the top of my head, though the latter I would have much less success with. Still, I could hit the high points.
But that’s just me.
I learned about MLK and that speech from a book my Dad brought home, in my early teens.
I was an avid reader, and read a lot of books that Pop brought home from his school library.
American history was part of our curriculum later(not this speech).
I was not an American of the 1960s (and I suspect neither were most of people on this board) but my understanding is that at the time it was highly inflammatory and radical. And that’s one mark of the success of the civil rights movement - that concepts that were regarded as absolutely OUTRAGEOUS (black and white people EQUAL? Never!) are now regarded as patently obvious and unremarkable
I’m Irish and am familiar with the speech, not sure where or how I came to hear of it…