Summary
Preparation is the key to building the necessary confidence for speechmaking. While most people fear public speaking, if you are prepared, you will feel much better about getting up in front of an audience. Get a sense of what you look like, but not in a mirror – it won’t give you a realistic sense of what you are like as a speaker; instead, film yourself, and go before smaller groups of people and use their opinions to help you improve.
Working in teams can be highly effective, because they allow people with different skill sets to combine their strengths and counteract each other’s weaknesses. The creative strengths of one member can combine with the analytical strengths of another member to generate products of quality in both areas. Also, some team members may be able to solve different aspects of a problem more quickly than others, so by working together, they can come together to reach a general solution more quickly. However, all team members have to buy in for the project to be a success. If only one or a few team members is working hard on the project, while the others are not putting in much effort, that will lead to frustration and conflict, as those doing all the work will not want the other members to get the same quality grade as they do. I prefer to work in teams, because of the positive results of synergy, but only in situations where everyone is ready to work hard.
Speech: (loud portions in bold, soft sections in italics)
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. 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 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 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. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, "My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims’ pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New
York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous
slopes of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last!
