Rhetorical Analysis Of I Have A Dream Speech

The Civil Rights Movement was a big thing for the United states and we as Americans will always remember Martin Luther King Jr. for helping lead the people and inspire change and bring hope. The speech “ I Have a Dream” by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an important gathering of people at the Lincoln Memorial. A huge crowd gathered to listen to his powerful speech which helped to inspire change. Martin Luther King also wrote a letter to eight white clergymen named “Letter From Birmingham Jail” the letter was written in in his jail cell which he was in for marching and protests. In both of these texts Dr. King used pathos and logos to inspire change and reach out to the people during the civil rights movements.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15, 1929. At the age of 25, King earned a sociology degree and completed his Ph.D (A&E Networks Television). King’s charismatic and strong attitude helped him become a successful minister and the most famous civil-rights activists. On the day of August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his inspirational speech, I Have a Dream. Approximately 200,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. to watch King personally.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the most important leaders of the civil rights movement. He graduated from a segregated high school at the age of fifteen and earned a bachelor degree at a segregated institution in Atlanta in 1948. King was known to be a strong civil rightist, and he was part of the committee known as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. On August 28, 1963, King presented his well-known speech, “I Have a Dream,” during The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom for Africans’ civil and economic rights. His “I Had a Dream” speech was known as the most influential speech that has tremendously impacted the United States forever by its powerful rhetorics and the emotional connection to the audience.

During the era of the civil rights movements in the 60s, among the segregation, racism, and injustice against the blacks, Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the Lincoln Memorial to deliver one of the greatest public speeches for freedom in that decade. In Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech he effectively uses ethos, diction and powerful metaphors to express the brutality endured by African American people. Yet his most important method of reaching his audience, and conveying his enduring message of equality and freedom for the whole nation was his appeal to pathos. With these devices, King was able to move thousands of hearts and inspire the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Opening his speech Martin Luther King Jr. sets up his credibility with his use of ethos, referring to the Declaration of Independence saying, “This note was a promise that all men… would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life.” He places the strong authority of the declaration on his side to show how the American people are in contradiction to their own “sacred obligation” and the Negros have gotten a “bad check.” A metaphor representing the unfulfilled promise of human rights for the African Americans.

In another article, under same name as Cohadas’, Kelly Anne Donovan (2002) gives the background and the importance of Kennedy in her article, “James Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss”. President Kennedy won the 1960 election and took office in January of 1961 after a tight race. The votes that pushed him over the edge though, were those of black voters. During his campaign, Kennedy had openly supported civil rights which in turn gave him the support of minority voters. With the election of the first president supportive of the Civil Right movement, Meredith saw this as the perfect opportunity to submit his application to the University of Mississippi, and he did so just one day after Kennedy’s inauguration on January 21,

The ultimate goal of justice is slowly but surely been achieved today for the black community. A day that heavily influenced this achievement was in 1963 during the March on Washington, in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The man who changed lives that day only wanted those who heard him to apply his message to their lives. In his famous, “I Have a Dream” speech Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. uses repetition, specific, illustrative detail and examples, allusions, and figurative language in order to amplify his message that his audience needed to bond together in order to fight for civil rights and justice now. Dr. King emphasizes the fact that his dream is to achieve racial equality and justice through the use of repetition.

M.L.K use of Logos and Pathos in his Writings Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered for many things. He is a world renowned civil rights activist whose words affected the hearts of many. His marches united people race demanding the rights for all Americans in a peaceful, yet effective manner. His speeches drew crowds of thousands of people, whose lives were affected by his words. But how was Dr. King able to do so much with just words?

He uses a strong choice of diction and syntaxes to appeal to the emotions of his audience. Pieces of his speech such as, “...testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. can long endure,” and, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here,” show his overwhelming feeling towards what he is speaking about. The civil war left a deep impression on Lincoln and he let that shine through as he gave the Gettysburg Address. Using the ethos style in his speaking let the audience know that he was going through as rough of a time as they were during and after this hard time in American

One of the most famous speeches in the history of the United States is the Gettysburg Address, delivered by Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The speech is directed to the American citizens and the soldiers to gain their support; Lincoln also wanted to lead the people to peace and prosperity. The main focus of the speech was to honor the soldiers that fought in the Battle of Gettysburg and to emphasize the importance of liberty. The tone of the speech is extremely hopeful in such a way that he hopes the audience will live a peaceful life. Throughout the speech, Lincoln uses repetition to really get the point across to the people just how dedicated he was and how dedicated the people should be.

Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the most influential African-American activists in American History and was a key participant in the Civil Rights movement, the goal of which was to provide full civil rights to all rights in America. MLK has written many, many speeches and letters in favor of the Civil Rights movement in America, the most famous of them being his legendary “I Have a Dream” Speech and the monumental “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. To attempt to gain support for his cause, MLK employs the use of emotional appeals, also known as pathos, and logical appeals, also known as logos, which aid to stir emotion and reasoning in the listener. It is more than obvious that MLK tends to tug at the heartstrings of his listeners with his emotionally charged language essential to his success. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. uses more powerful and plentiful examples of pathos in his literature, examples of which being his “I Have a Dream” speech and his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, than logos due to the more powerful emotional connection they carry which can convince his listeners to sympathize with his civil rights movement.