Identify emotional passages from King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered passionate
speeches that effectively used ethos, pathos, and logos to appeal to his audience, resulting in
emotionally compelling speeches that urged listeners to reshape the current racial landscape of
America. This speech is one of the most emotionally compelling, and it is full of examples that
listeners would find "emotional." Here are a few that really stand out to
me:

But 100 years later the Negro still is not free. One
hundred years later the life of the Negro is still badly crippled by the manacles of segregation
and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later the Negro lives on a lonely island of
poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro
is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own
land.

In this section, the use of(repeating the phrase
one hundred at the beginning of successive sentences) stresses the length of time that has
passed since the promises of the Emancipation Proclamation. It shows how long African Americans
have been waiting to fulfill their own dreams and how their life contrasts with the
"material prosperity" they find all round them. King goes on to state that an African
American feels "exile[d] in his own land," further showing the inherent injustice in
the current racial divide in America.

We can never be
satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the
motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the
Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as
long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating
"For Whites Only". We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot
vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not
satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness
like a mighty stream.

In this section of the speech, King
shows the various forms of discrimination which are commonplace to African Americans at this
moment in history. They face the inability to rest while traveling. Their children are unable to
enter various places of business because of the pigmentation of their skin. There are places
where the right to vote is impeded. King urges listeners to believe that justice is coming and
uses a(like waters) to further illustrate this point.

I
have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be
judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

This is one of the most memorable lines from the speech and really
sums up the vision in a single sentence. King uses the illustration of children (and his own
children, at that) to sway listeners to believe in a nation that will judge a person by his
characternot by skin color. Using children in this example highlights the innocence of the
youngest members of societyand shows that maybe with a collective effort, these children will
fall heir to a better America.