Dr. Martin Luther King's Capitol Crawl Speech

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The United States has always been known as the land of the free and the home of the brave. A place where every single man woman or child is equal in the eyes of the law and has the same opportunity for success. However in some instances of our country's history people have not always been treated with the equality that they deserve, when an injustice like this occurs a group of people devote to a cause find a way to raise there voice and change the way people are treated in our great country. One way that people change social and legal norms is by garnering attention through the media. The most famous and effective instance of this is the “Capitol Crawl”. On Monday, March 12, 1990 disability rights activists descended on the U.S. Capitol demanding …show more content…
Despite the media attention that the protest caused its greatest product was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's “I Have a Dream” speech. His speech is widely hailed as one of the greatest speeches of all time. King's speech invokes pivotal documents in American history, including the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the United States Constitution. Early in his speech, King alludes to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address by saying "Five score years ago..." In reference to the abolition of slavery articulated in the Emancipation Proclamation, King says: "It came s daybreak to end the long night of their captivity." Early in his speech, King urges his audience a joyous to seize the moment; "Now is the time" is repeated three times in the sixth paragraph. The most widely cited, often quoted phrase "I have a dream", which is repeated eight times as King paints a picture of an integrated and unified America for his audience. Other occasions include "One hundred years later", "We can never be satisfied", "With this faith", "Let freedom ring", and "free at last". The speech resonated with all who heard it white,black,young,old every kind of person could relate with what Dr.King preached about. This one speech was the turning point of the civil rights movement and the success of it changed the very culture of …show more content…
There have been numerous different social movements that have used peaceful protesting to prove a point, but the one that was most effective was the montgomery bus boycott. Lasting just over a year, the Montgomery bus boycott was a protest campaign against racial segregation on the public transit system in Montgomery, Ala. The protest began, on Dec. 1, 1955, after African-American Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white person. The next day, Dr. King proposed a citywide boycott of public transportation at a church