Question

Read the excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech.

[1] I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

[2] 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.

[3] 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 languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.

Which phrase from the text provides the best context clue to determine the meaning of "manacles" in paragraph 3?
A) 100 years later
B)Chains of discrimination
C)Lonely island of poverty
D)Vast ocean of material prosperity

Answer 1

Answer: The correct option is B: CHAINS OF DISCRIMINATION

Step-by-step explanation:

“I have a dream” is the name of the most popular Martin Luther King Jr.’s discourse. In this text Michael King Jr, an American Baptist pastor who always worked for black people’s rights, express his principal wishes:

• Black and white people sharing quiet and happily the same world

• Equity and equality regardless of the colour.

The speech was delivered on August 28 in the year of 1963 during the March on Washington for Jobs and freedom and it became a historical icon; in fact, it is considered as one of the most powerful and best-made speeches of all times attending to its rhetorical resources.

Now that we know more about the discourse context and after we read the excerpt of “I have a dream” we can say that the correct option is B: CHAIS OF DISCRIMINATION because the main idea of the text is to talk about how black people had been, at least until that moment, systematically oppressed, so the word “chains” fits perfectly to what the speaker was trying to say: all the discrimination that afro-American people had experimented marked their lives, even when slavery didn’t exist according to the constitutional rules.

Answer 2

Answer: The answer is B

Explanation: manacles are a shackle for the hand or wrist which makes sense for the answer to be B