Rhetorical Analysis: The Ballot Or The Bullet

The Ballot or the Bullet is a gripping speech that stresses the importance of voting and black nationalism for African Americans through these two methods that's how the black community will promote change. The historical discourse was delivered in 1964 to the Cory Methodist Church by human rights activist, minister, and icon Malcolm X. The speech demonstrates the power of discourse more importantly serves as the perfect example of a rhetorical situation. The civil rights movement was a pivotal time for African Americans and discourse was often used to address the issues the black community dealt with. According to Lloyd Bitzer the rhetorical situation consists of “a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations,” which are constraint.
In the opening of the speech makes it known that he is in fact still Muslim, but he wants to put that aside, because he wants to promote unity among black people regardless of one's religious beliefs. “If we bring up religion we’ll have dif- ferences; we’ll have arguments; and we’ll never be able to get together. But if we keep our religion at home, keep our religion in the closet, keep our religion between ourselves and our God, but when we come out here, we have a fight that’s common to all of us against an ene- my who is common to all of us.” Malcolm X was aware that his beliefs will make some people hesitant, so in many ways that caused some restriction. He was also militant the opposite of Martin Luther King, who he said “become more famous for being involved in the civil rights struggle.” Not many black people during that time took a violent approach, therefore his religion and ideals limited