Dr. King's oratory
Certainly Dr. King was a great orator, as is shown by his masterpiece, "I have a Dream", and other speeches equally effective but not as well known. However, his oratory falls into a special category, that of the sermon. Indeed, most of his speeches could have been called sermons. He was, of course, a clergyman and had mastered the art of preaching, specifically the preaching style known as the "black preacher" style. This is far from a derogatory term, as this style is much practiced and admired by white preachers as well as black. Since it was originally developed for the benefit of an intellectually unsophisticated and mostly uneducated audience/congregation, it is marked by the following characteristics: a) the content is strictly limited to one, or only a few, basic points, although a sermon in this style may last an hour or more; b) ideas, expressed by sentences or phrases, are repeated over and over with or without variations, e.g., "I have a dream that ..., I have a dream that ..., I have a dream that ..."; c) the call-and-response technique is often used, which is the preacher deliberately but tacitly inviting a response from the auditory, usually supplied by ejaculations such as, "Amen!", "Yes, Lord!", "Tell it, Brother!", etc; d) a dramatic oratorical delivery, with carefully arranged crescendos rising at times to the top of the preacher's voice, at others falling to an almost inaudible whisper, accompanied by dramatic gestures, hand-waving, Bible-thumping, leaning out of the pulpit, etc., all as carefully scripted and carried out as an opera. To read one of Dr. King's speeches (or one by another preacher in this style) gives you about as much idea of what it was really like as reading the text ofThe Magic Flute or some other operatic masterpiece without hearing or seeing it.