American Dream Rhetorical Analysis

I Have A Dream For one hundred years, the negro community has lived under the repression of the majority of the white people. Negro rights had slowly become abolished and ignored for the benefit of the whites. But one brave African American decided to speak above it all, in one famous speech called “I have a dream”. Martin Luther King successfully uses figurative language because the complex metaphors serve to not only explain the injustices that negroes have gone through, but they touch on the white audiences patriotic tendencies from a nonviolent standpoint King’s use of elaborate extended metaphors is effective because it translates the many repeated complaints of black people who have been oppressed, for metaphors that express the same meanings in a fresh, profound way. “One hundred years later , the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination” (Paragraph 3).

The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.” Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, or better known as Frederick Douglass, was an African-American who supported the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century. Slave-born of an unknown father, Frederick Douglass taught himself how to write and read- even though it was a crime for black people to learn- and became one of the most eloquent orator, and writer during the nineteenth century. With his great passion of wanting to demolish slavery, he gained thousands and thousands of black people, and even white people, who supported him in the abolition of slavery. His antislavery not only reached the United States, but even Great Britain. Abandoned first by his mother and then by his grandmother, then passing through very

Douglass claimed that although slavery was abolished, blacks were living under a different kind of slavery after the Civil war. Discrimination and racism was prominent and there were few laws enforced. “So long as discriminatory laws ensured defacto white control over Southern blacks, then ‘slavery by yet another name’ persisted. ‘Slavery is not abolished,’ he contended, ‘until the black man has the ballot’ with which to defend his interests and freedom.” (Howard-Pitney 485). Here we see Douglass using logic in order to reach his audience.

In hindsight he believed his poems helped others realize the injustices that all minorities had to face during this era. Langston Hughes was born February 1st, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. In the roaring 20’s he started writing professionally and was essential in portraying black life in America. Hughes grew up in a time of social injustice involving the treatment of minorities (specifically African Americans). As his career went on the Harlem Renaissance became a major movement in which he was essential to.

In the autobiography “Black Boy” by Richard Wright, Richard learns that racism is prevalent not only in his Southern community, and he now becomes “unsure of the entire world” when he realizes he “had been unwittingly an agent for pro-Ku Klux Klan literature” by delivering a Klan newspaper. He is now aware of the fact that even though “Negroes were fleeing by the thousands” to Chicago and the rest of the North, life there was no better and African Americans were not treated as equals to whites. This incident is meaningful both in the context of his own life story and in the context of broader African American culture as well. At the most basic level, it reveals Richard’s naïveté in his belief that racism could never flourish in the North. When

The film At the River I Stand was a very interesting film that went back to the civil rights movement and told the dream that Martin Luther King had and how his dream has come a long way. This film took place in 1968 in Memphis, TN. It focused on how African Americans were excluded out and were paid low wages and worked in poor working conditions. Not only did they go on strike to gain equality, but they also wanted to stand up for what’s right. Being though Martin Luther King was assassinated during this film, African Americans started more riots all over the country to fight for justice.

Q&R Paper 4: Explication of a Stanza The civil rights movement was one of the most turbulent times in American history. People that had been oppressed due to the color of their skin were slowly gaining back the rights they deserve. Langston Hughes was a very prominent author calling for equal rights. In his poem “I, Too” Hughes shows the story of a man not allowed to eat with other people. In this poem, Hughes looks to a future of pure equality for everyone.

[...] One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation.”(MLK). This quote shows the touching and emotional part of how the Negroes at this time is not living the life they were promised about 100 years later. Martin Luther King pulls with your heart strings to show you the emotional part of how the racism is affecting people therefore makes his speech powerful in the audience’s eyes and if it is powerful enough, which it is, the speech will have an effect on the audience’s perspective. Writers who

Black Power Huey Newton, cofounder of the Black Panthers, once said, “Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.” Due to the mistreatment of African Americans a speech was given and a phrase was coined that raised awareness of the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement. Stokely Carmichael was one of many who were leaders in the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, Stokely Carmichael was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The SNCC was formed to give younger blacks more of a voice in the Civil Rights Movement. During the March Against Fear, James Meredith was shot on June 5th, 1966.

African Americans had a hard time in the South between 1955 to 1968. The civil rights movement was a non-violent protest to renew black rights. Great Leaders fought in peace with people without using their fists. History.com states, “Nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Southern states still inhabited a starkly unequal world of disenfranchisement, segregation and various forms of oppression, including race-inspired violence.” First, racial segregation in the South made it hard for African Americans to live and or do much of anything in white communities. In 1955 racial segregation continued in the Southern region of America.

Among these folks were writers who made people realize everywhere that African Americans were people like them, they had a brain like them and a heart like them and the only thing different was the color of their skin. One of the ultimate authors of this time period to change people 's thoughts was Harper Lee who wrote the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee wrote, "You never really understand a person from his point of view... until you climb in his skin and walk around." This book affected how white 's view on blacks were. During this decade, African Americans and their supporters used nonviolent protests, sit-ins, boycotts, and civil disobedience to remonstrate the discrimination they received.

The Civil Rights Movement was an ongoing fight for racial fairness that took place for over a hundred years after the Civil War. Martin Luther King, Jr., Booker T. Washington, and Rosa Parks led the battles that eventually made changes in the law. When most people talk about the Civil Rights Movement they are talking about the rallies in the 1950s and 1960s that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1870, Americans likely would not have anticipated the need for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed African Americans the right to vote.

The task of this assignment was first of all to explain the relationship between the colored and the white races in the Southern States of America from 1900 to the 1960’s. To investigate this, I used different kinds of literature and a few sources of history. Through these materials it was clear that this relationship between the colored and the white races was unequal and the colored race was discriminated by the whites. The Jim Crow-laws created a systematic racial segregation in the Southern States and it required the Civil Rights Movement from around 1955 to 1968 to do something about this. Martin Luther King was among others a leader of the non-violence movement which fought for civil rights for the colored race through sit-ins, boycotts

Fredrick Douglas convinced Abraham Lincoln that African Americans were ready to fight and serve the Union. Robert Smalls was one of the first recruits to recruit colored troops. Black slaves volunteered by the thousands. They had suffered to long and been suppressed for many this was their way “ getting back at the white man” Yet many slaves saw this as a fight for their freedom and the freedom of their children, so that one day they would live