Martin Luther King Jrs Impact on the Civil Rights Movement Essay

Martin Luther King Jr's Impact on the Civil Rights Movement Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech directly contributed to the Civil Rights movement. While delivering his speech at a kairotic moment, King tells us how blacks have been serving an injustice and that they should be treated equally. Much had transpired before the speech was delivered. As civil rights protests spread throughout the nation, King continued to combine peaceful methods of protest and his theological training to work towards the hope of equal rights for blacks (Kauffeld and Lefrd, 1989). During this time, blacks were not treated equally and were often denied service. King was trying to get the merchants and the government officials to negotiate on their terms which would allow blacks to be allowed in all facilities that white people were and to be hired on a non-discriminatory basis (King, 1969). For example, in Birmingham, Alabama, black men and women held sit-ins and kneel-ins where they were denied service at lunch counters and attendance at church. Many demonstrators were fined and arrested for these acts. In 1963, King, Reverend Shuttlesworth, and Reverend Abernathy lead a protest in Birmingham. They were then arrested and taken to Southside Jail. Society treated blacks and whites differe ntly, like they didn't matter. King was raised to treat others in the same manner no matter what the circumstances, which lead to his speech that contributed to the civil rights movement and helped change blacks rights (Dyson, 2000). On August 28th, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., the African-American civil-rights movement reached its high potential when Martin Luther King spoke to over 250,000 people attending h... ... our nation became one and is a better place because of it. The ?I Have a Dream? speech not only contributed to the civil rights movement, but it is the most influential speech in history. Works Cited Bond, Julian. "Kings 1963 I Have a Dream Speech." Seattle Times 4 April 1993. Dyson, Michael. I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King Jr. New York: Free Press, 2000. King, Corretta. "My Life with Martin Luther King Jr." Holt Rinehart and Winston: Canada. 1969 King, Corretta S. The Words of Martin Luther King Jr. New York: Newmarket Press,1987. Kauffeld, Fred and Lefrd, Michael. Texts in Context: Critique dialogues on Significant Episodes in American Public Rhetoric. Davis: Hemagoras Press, 1989. Rappaport, Dorreen. Martins Big Words: The Life of Martin Luther King Jr. New York: Scholastic Inc., 2002.