In his emotionally charged speech at the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. strongly urged and desperately pleaded with his audience through the use of allusion, metaphor, and repetition to champion for racial equality. King uses these methods to hopefully open the minds of his audience, and change their overall mindset on racial equality. Specifically, King intended to impact those listeners who continued to demonstrate strong beliefs not aligned with the equality of all men. Martin Luther King Jr. begins by using repetition to show how long the Negro has fought for freedom. MLK states “But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.” In the second paragraph of his speech, King explains multiple times that the Negro is still fighting even after 100 years. In King's view, “Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.” In this statement, King implies that if the nation doesn’t make changes against racial …show more content…
King states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” King used this quote from the Declaration of Independence to show that this document says that all men are created equal, which includes African Americans. “Five score years ago, a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today...” In this quote, King is referencing the Gettysburg Address by beginning his speech the same that Lincoln began the Gettysburg Address. King’s allusions to other well-known historical moments reflecting on statements of racial equality give substance to his own beliefs and