Describe some allusions or imagery in Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech."

I would be happy to answer a couple of these question, although you are only permitted to ask one question per post. The "I Have a Dream Speech" is a brilliant piece of oratory history. It is filled with imagery and allusions to American and Biblical history. Let's look at a couple of the important examples of this imagery.

This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice

Martin Luther Kings describes the Emancipation Proclamation as a beacon light of hope because the document freed slaves from over four hundred years of slavery and captivity. He references this long duration when he says "the long night of their captivity." The passage describes a great optimism that the freedman felt after the Civil War. The "beacon light" seems to describe a lighthouse and the optimism that navigators would have when they see the beacon from a lighthouse in the evening.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

By describing segregation with the word "manacles", King is making an obvious comparison to slavery. Slaves were transported from Africa with manacles, or iron buckles that function as handcuffs. By describing discrimination with the word "chains" creates the same image of African-Americans as slaves. These words are utilized to create the sense that the African-American in America still existed in a state of slavery because of the discrimination and segregation they faced on a daily basis.