King's Dream (Icons of America Series) - Hardcover

Sundquist, Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300118074 ISBN 13: 9780300118070

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2009

Synopsis

"I have a dream" - no words are more widely recognized, or more often repeated, than those called out from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963. King's speech, elegantly structured and commanding in tone, has become shorthand not only for his own life but for the entire civil rights movement. In this new exploration of the "I have a dream" speech, Eric J. Sundquist places it in the history of American debates about racial justice, debates as old as the nation itself, and demonstrates how the speech, an exultant blend of grand poetry and powerful elocution, perfectly expressed the story of African American freedom.This book is the first to set King's speech within the cultural and rhetorical traditions on which the civil rights leader drew in crafting his oratory, as well as its essential historical contexts, from the early days of the republic through present-day Supreme Court rulings. At a time when the meaning of the speech has been obscured by its appropriation for every conceivable cause, Sundquist clarifies the transformative power of King's "Second Emancipation Proclamation" and its continuing relevance for contemporary arguments about equality.

About this title

Review:

"... Eric J. Sundquist has produced one of the best short books we have on the ideas of racial equality." -- George Bornstein, Times Literary Supplement, 14th January 2009

About the Author:

Eric J. Sundquist is UCLA Foundation Professor of Literature, UCLA. He is author or editor of eight books on American literature and culture, including the award-winning volumes To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature and Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0300118074
• ISBN 13: 9780300118070
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288