As a writer, I have an obsession with words, speech, poetry, songs…really, anything written or spoken or sung. My dream class to teach would be one that would analyze great speeches in history, and analyze them given their context in time and place. We would analyze one speech a week, and try to understand why the speech was written, what was happening at the time and place to find meaning behind the speech. I’ll probably never get to teach that class, but I do bring elements of that idea of class into the classes I teach today. We talk about Ronald Reagan giving the Challenger speech, and Adolf Hitler, and Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., among others. Often, students have never been exposed to the speeches, and most definitely have never heard the social history behind the speech.
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday this week, I bring to you the story behind his most famous speech, just in case, as the great Paul Harvey used to say, you don’t know the rest of the story.
I hope you enjoy.
Marianne Paiva, recovering paramedic and adrenaline junky who comes to Ethnography.com after 4 years driving ambulances very, very fast. When she gave up life in the fast lane, she decided to study paramedics instead, and wrote the book, Breathe: Essays from a Recovering Paramedic, which every trauma junky and ambulance chaser should buy multiple copies of from Amazon.com.
A professor told her after she finished her B.A. at Chico State in 1999 that she could study paramedics as a vocation, if not a living. This she has done off and on for ten years or so, while also teaching Introduction to Sociology, First Year Experience, Sociology of Stress, Population, Ethnicity and Nationalism, and other courses for California State University, Chico. On slow days in class, she wakes students up with stories about ambulances, and funny stories about freshmen. In her spare time, she gardens, tends to her children, and writes creative Facebook postings, and Ethnography.com blogs. You can connect with Marianne at her website www.mariannepaiva.com and also purchase her collection of essays here from Amazon.com. Marianne Paiva is a lecturer in the department of Sociology at California State University, Chico. Currently an inactive author, awaiting a poke with a sharp stick.