Cesar Chavez Rhetorical Analysis

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an African-American Civil Rights Movement known for advancing civil rights by using nonviolent protest movements. Cesar Chavez, a labor union organizer and civil rights leader, publishes an article arguing about the importance of nonviolence in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Three most prominent rhetorical devices Chavez uses in the article include the use of moral reasoning, juxtaposition, and appeal to history. Chavez uses these rhetorical devices brilliantly to build his argument on nonviolent resistance in honor of the late Dr. King. Moral reasoning is the act of persuasion urging someone to do something because it is the right thing to do. This is exactly what Chavez does in his article: urging people to use nonviolence as a solution to a problem rather than resorting to violence because it is morally the right thing to do. This aspect is

Appeal to history is used as an argument that use past cases as a guide to the future. It is used by the author in the article when he looks back at nonviolent protests in the past and how successful they can be over violence. One example being Gandhi’s marches in which he taught that “[t]he boycott…is the most nearly perfect instrument of nonviolent change, allowing masses of people to participate actively in a cause” (Chavez 61-64). Chavez also states that if victory were attained through violence, it “…would come at the expense of injury or perhaps death” and it will only be temporary as it will just “… [replace] one violent form of power with just another just as violent” (Chavez 67-68, 75-77). The author makes it clear that history has proven the nonviolent protests holds more leverage as the oppression it is against, whereas violence can only lead to injuries and deaths of many and only result in a similar or worse