Although Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and Atticus Finch’s speech took place thirty years apart, they share many similarities. Martin Luther King and Atticus Finch had different life experiences, lived in different times, and knew different people; regardless, they wrote speeches that were very similar in topic and delivery. Both speeches utilized the prejudice of the times, the potential of the judicial system, and American beliefs in order to support their cases. By using these three things in conjunction, they were both able to make and support their arguments.
The times that Martin Luther King and Atticus Finch lived in were filled with prejudice and racial tension, and both men utilized these as evidence to support their cases. In Atticus’s speech, he states early on that the case is as simple as black and white, as, although Tom’s innocence is obvious, his race will ultimately decide the case. Because Tom was a black man accused of a crime against a young white woman, the jury thought of him as guilty before the trial had even started. In Martin Luther King’s speech, he states that he dreams of an America where his children will not be judged based on the color of…show more content… In Atticus’s speech, he alluded to Thomas Jefferson, saying that all men are created equal in order to show that the jury’s bias against Tom Robinson contradicted this belief; because the jury was unable to look past Tom’s skin color, they were giving him an unequal chance of success compared to white defendants. In Martin Luther King’s speech, he spoke of the “unalienable rights” of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and how discrimination against black people took these rights away from them. These points strengthened both speakers’ cases by showing that the mistreatment of black people directly went against core American values and
