Dr. King and the "Bad Check"

The influential civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in the greatest demonstration of freedom. He gave the well known speech “I Have a Dream” in front of the Lincoln Memorial to thousands and thousands of people. This speech was so important because of it’s support of civil rights in a non-violent way, which brought a lot of attention to his cause and was the beginning of a new America. In the speech “I Have a Dream” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. tries to convince non-civil rights supporters to end racism by using the metaphor of African Americans receiving a “bad check”.

Dr. King compared African Americans and what they got from America as receiving a “bad check”. He uses this because he knows that everyone can relate to this, because everyone receives checks and no one wants to receive a bad one. We can all understand how it would feel to receive a bad check, and how we would feel that we were slighted or misused. He wants to cash the check that will give African Americans the same rights and privileges as whites and will give African Americans “the riches of freedom and security of justice”. He wants to be able to cash that check that he has received from America and in turn get from it what white Americans get from it instead of continually being turned away because it is a “bad check”. The African Americans that heard his speech could relate to this metaphor because they know how it feels to continually receive that “bad check” in the metaphoric sense; and white Americans know how much they would not want to receive a bad check, and could understand how he meant it in the literal sense.

Dr. King’s choice in using this metaphor was very effective. He related to his audience so they could all understand on a personal level what he was talking about, and how they need to support him and his cause to change America. It was thousands of tools like this that made his speech so effective and really started to make a difference in America.