In Mary Louise Pratt's article "Arts of the Contact Zone," her "contact zones" are referred to as "[spaces] in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict [. . .]" (Bartholomae and Petrosky 605). In other words, it is a location where two cultures meet and, frequently, clash.
             For my historical documents, I chose among Frederick Douglass' "What to A Slave Is the Fourth of July?", Chief Seattle's "How Can One Sell the Air?" (usually referred to as the "Speech of 1854"), and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech "I Have A Dream." However, Chief Seattle's speech was translated into variable forms, and some web pages hinted that the speech was unreliable for several minute reasons (refer to links on Chief Seattle's Thoughts). I also disregarded Douglass' speech because I did not find it as emotionally enticing as King's speech. It was an excellent autoethnographic text, but I did not feel as stimulated by his words.
             I therefore chose Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Reverend who was famous for his stirring and poignant speeches. In these speeches, he protested the prejudice and racism suffered African Americans in 1960s America. He describes his dream of a peaceful integration of blacks and whites, imitating a "literate [art]" (Pratt 613) of the "contact zone."
             King's speech "I Have A Dream" aptly fits Pratt's idea of an autoethnographic text. This speech was presented on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington and was read from the steps in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. He talks of the aftermath of slavery, which is an illustrative effect of the "contact zone" between whites and blacks ...