Similarities Between A Raisin In The Sun And I Have A Dream

“America has given the Negro people a bad check”¹, this is thoroughly shown, along with other themes, throughout both A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech. Before the civil rights movement, and for some time after, blacks were given the short end of the stick, they had to fight for their dreams and they had to fight against racism. They were given next to nothing but they were still expected to ask the whites to “forgive [them] for ever wanting to be anything at all!”(p. 27)². The ideas between the two works blend together very well and very easily that one of the biggest differentiations is the attitudes of the white people towards the blacks.
Dreams are an incredibly monumental part of every person, they are what shapes them and guides them, and Hansberry and King both experienced a time when it was unbelievably difficult for blacks to achieve those dreams because the means necessary to reach them
However, when Dr. King made his speech there were white people in the crowd as well as black people. The white people knew that a change was coming and they were ready for the change because they thought that it would make things better, and Dr. King even acknowledges them while he is speaking, “many of our white brothers, as evidence by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.”² Between the speech and the play there is only about a decade of time between them, but the attitudes of the white people couldn’t be more