Martin Luther King Jr’s speech, “I Have a Dream”, took place at the March on Washington. This march was a peaceful protest regarding racial injustice. His speech is considered one of the best speeches ever written. Martin Luther King Jr used effective rhetorical and argumentative devices in his speech to appeal to his audience and capture their attention. To begin, King used repetition to emphasize his words. In the era of the Jim Crow laws, African Americans were upset because they were segregated in public places. King informs Americans that they “can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one” (9). King exaggerates that African Americans can never be in peace as long as they do not have equal rights. This makes the audience angry, and wanting to do something about it. …show more content…
He repeated “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood” (11). When King kept saying that he had a dream, the audience hoped that the dream would come true, and that the good things triumph over the bad things. This makes the audience want to participate in more protests and make a difference for racial