When Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. in August 1963, the Civil Rights Movement was well underway. Nonetheless, many point to King's speech as the act that galvanized bystanders to become a larger part of the community already fighting for civil rights.
One of the ways King was able to affect so many people with his speech was through his use of repetition. During the speech, the words "I have a dream" and "let freedom ring" were repeated multiple times.
By repeating "let freedom ring" in the closing paragraphs of his speech, King was able to give a vision of what the Civil Right movement could bring — freedom for all. He spoke about locations throughout the United States in which people should "let freedom ring." By doing so, he made the possibility of equal rights more real to those people who were listening in the places he mentioned, including Colorado, California, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, Georgia, and Tennessee.
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