You’ve probably heard this a few times…
Tell your audience what you’re going to say.
Tell them.
Then tell them what you told them.
Peggy Noonan, a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, calls this “one of the oldest cliches in communication.” But it works.
Some of the greatest speeches in history are famous because of their repetition.
In his famous address on the National Mall, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began by repeating several key phrases from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. 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. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
“Five score years ago” grabs your attention. Why? You’ve heard it many times before. Immediately your mind ties this “five score years ago” speech to the “four score and seven years ago” speech and gives it credibility. If Abraham Lincoln used this language in his address, Dr. King’s words must be worth listening to as well. Then he sets the hook.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly 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 languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
Hear that? One hundred years later, one hundred years later, one hundred years later… that’s a long time. What can be done about it? Dr. King tells us: he’s here and we’re here to consider this “dreadful condition”. He describes the struggles and hardships and racism encountered every day by African Americans in 1963. He sympathizes with their plight and shares in their experience. And then he brings hope.
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
Dream appears three times in two sentences. It sets the stage for what is to come.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
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.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
Just like that, “I Have a Dream” is seared into your memory. It stands for courage and conviction and long suffering and hope amidst tribulation. It represents the faith to “not wallow in the valley of despair.” These four words ignite a flame across the nation. And when people try to express what the civil rights movement should look like, they simply say, “I Have a Dream”.
Tell them the purpose, address the issue, tell them what you told them. It worked for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
