Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech “I Have A Dream” was written not only to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation’s 100th anniversary, but to urge his dominantly African American audience that their freedoms are long overdue. One rhetorical feature King used that spiked my interest was the use of the allusion, “taking the drug of gradualism” (405), when talking about America failing to give its citizens of color their unalienable rights. This interested me because King recognizes the fact that the entity responsible for segregation is hoping that the uprisings and protest just blow over and things will go back to normal. By using this analogy, King is urging his audience to be active in the movement before it loses its edge and demotivates people from trying to get their rights.