Martin Luther King: "I've Been to the Mountaintop"

Résumé du document

King's final speech took place in a specific context of tension and it represented the heyday of the civil rights movement. Large riots in major cities and the divisive issue of the Vietnam War had shattered the liberal consensus for civil rights and created an atmosphere of crisis. On April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King traveled to Memphis to lend his support to striking sanitation workers, who had been on strike since February 12. King's audience consisted of 2000 ardent and predominantly black followers gathered to support the cause of striking garbage workers in Memphis, Tennessee. That evening, he delivered his lyrical and prophetic "I‟ve Been to the Mountaintop" speech to the strikers and supporters at Mason Temple, the headquarters of the Church of God in Christ.

At that time, King had been through several experiences like the incident in Albany in 1961. Besides, this former campaign being a failure, we could wonder how Martin Luther King proceeded to convince his listeners to follow his advice. What were the means he avocated? He argued using strong images and great historical events to reinforce his speech in its own way, thanks to religious argumentation. He identified the Memphis strikers with historical victims and urged his listeners to act the part of the Good Samaritan. He also arranged the strike in a historical sequence that featured the Exodus, the Reformation, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Great Depression, and later in his address, the sit-ins for civil rights. His speech touched directly on the importance of unified, collective action and the fight for economic justice exemplified by the labor movement so with pacific means as a purpose.

Extraits

[...] Montgomery‟s black community had long been angry about their mistreatment on city buses where white drivers were often rude and abusive and decided to boycott this mean of transport. The Montgomery bus boycott was an immediate success, with support from the blacks in Montgomery and it lasted for more than a year. As a consequence, the Supreme Court upheld a federal court decision that ruled the bus segregation unconstitutional in November 1956. Martin Luther King was president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization that directed the boycott. [...]

[...] I ) Religion as a mean of struggle Martin Luther King quotes several and various important historical facts to encourage his audience to believe in a certain hope and he clearly wanted to energize his listeners on behalf of the strike. As he was a Baptist minister, he used the religion as a mean to struggle against discriminations and give hope to the African-American community. Also, he often refers to the Biblic aspects in his address. The first historical comparison that he makes is with Moses and the Jews nation. [...]

[...] Roosevelt belonged to the Democrat Party which helped Martin Luther King notably with John F. Kennedy president in 1961 who also used him in order to gain support of black people, whereas before, only the Republican Party solved many problems for Black people during the 20th Century. Moreover, for the Democrat Party we especially could think to the president, Lyndon Johnson, who pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress over the fierce opposition from Southern legislators. It prohibited segregation in public accommodations and discrimination in education and employment. [...]

[...] Thanks to this improvement, Martin Luther King wanted black community to fight together. He wanted them to use solidarity and unity, especially economically, in order to counter the white segregationnist society. His speech argued only in favour of pacific ways in the same way that Gandhi used. Also, King advocated boycotts and civil disobedience. By placing the struggle in Memphis in the company of epochal events and his own greatest achievement, King elevated the strike from a minor, local event to a significant act in the entire Western drama. [...]

[...] His main argument being to maintain unity, he refers to the Egyptians in the Antiquity who were known for their slavery in order to exemplify it. He explains that the Pharaoh prolonged the period of slavery thanks to a process : kept the slaves fighting among themselves” (l.32). Arguing that the unity of slaves allowed them to fight against the hold of Pharaoh slavery, King wants his listeners to apply the same concept with white segregationist society. Moreover, he shows the importance of being unify economically speaking. [...]