Rhetorical Analysis Of Martin Luther King's Speech
INTRODUCTION In front of 3000 people at the Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King acknowledged to the audience that the message he was about to share would be perceived as a form of treason. Yet, King told the crowd that he needed to speak up because “a time comes when silence is betrayal.” On that night, those 3000 attendees witnessed the nation’s foremost civil rights leader publicly denounce the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War. King critiqued the war from a civil rights perspective. He asserted that the Vietnam War drafted a disproportionate amount of Black men and also drew significant money, resources, and attention away from civil rights causes. He stood at the podium as he criticized America’s
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Thus, the moderate wing’s strategy to overcome McCarthyism and the Red Scare was to demonstrate their liberal anti-communist beliefs and reject the radical wing of the civil rights movement. However, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s surveillance of King suggests that despite preaching nonviolence, he remained a threatening and radical figure in the government’s eyes. After King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, where King called for racial equality and freedom for African Americans, Sullivan told the director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, that “[w]e must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security.” The FBI’s surveillance of King throughout his career demonstrates that despite being considered the leader of the nonviolent civil rights movement and attempting to work with other moderate organizations, the early 1960s. As King became a prominent figure in the civil rights movement, he became the leading figure while detracting from conservative organizations’ civil rights
Thus, the moderate wing’s strategy to overcome McCarthyism and the Red Scare was to demonstrate their liberal anti-communist beliefs and reject the radical wing of the civil rights movement. However, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s surveillance of King suggests that despite preaching nonviolence, he remained a threatening and radical figure in the government’s eyes. After King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, where King called for racial equality and freedom for African Americans, Sullivan told the director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, that “[w]e must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security.” The FBI’s surveillance of King throughout his career demonstrates that despite being considered the leader of the nonviolent civil rights movement and attempting to work with other moderate organizations, the early 1960s. As King became a prominent figure in the civil rights movement, he became the leading figure while detracting from conservative organizations’ civil rights