Martin Luther King Allusions

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech at The March on Washington. A call for equality and freedom became one of the defining moments of the civil rights movement and one of the most iconic speeches known to American history. When people remember the I Have a Dream speech, they recall King’s message about civil rights. But perhaps there is another reason behind the memorability of this ever-living speech. King, master of allusions, has effectively taken inspiration from other well-known literature, consequently resulting in a phenomenally well written piece of art. How and with what effect King included these borrowings will be critically analysed in the following essay.
To begin with, the numerous biblical allusions

The first four words of his speech "Five score years ago… " are an allusion to Abraham Lincoln’s The Gettysburg Address, . By doing this King therefore links America’s founding, which Lincoln spoke of, and the civil war when he spoke. It was important for him to frame civil rights as a chapter in the larger American mythology so that those who identify with this mythology might get a better understanding. Another example for this is located early in his speech "This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.". Here he describes the “promissory note”, meaning that when the United States came into being, its founders made a promise to the American people that the new government would be one where all men were created equal. A direct quotation from the US Constitution used by King adheres to this: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”. By referring back to the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence King succeeded in underscoring his point that the African American people have still not been granted the freedom promised to all Americans under the