Pathos And Logos In Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream

During the mid-20th Century, racism was a huge issue in the United States, the most prominently discriminated against being African-Americans. Although all blacks were supposed to be free as mandated by the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, under a corrupt law system, blacks lost many of their civil rights. Because of this, blacks decided to change the system and multiple civil rights activists and groups appeared with this mission. The most notable activist of them was Martin Luther King Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Throughout the 1960s, King engaged in a plethora of civil rights boycotts and protests, helping to further the movement. At his climax, King gave the “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of

It struck directly into the hearts of blacks across America, made whites ashamed of their actions and ready to create a new racially equal society. In just 17 minutes, King influenced and informed the generations upon generations of people about racial equality and discrimination. According to seemingly endless scholars, King’s speech is a “masterpiece of rhetoric”. King carefully structures his speech to appeal to the different types of audiences, supporting it with the three rhetorical modes of ethos, pathos and logos marking King’s name in

The speech’s structure is intended to appeal to the three types of audiences most likely to be listening to King’s speech – the average blacks who are discriminated against, the average whites who discriminate, and militant blacks. In the first part of his speech, King carefully paints a picture of the plight of the normal African-American. In the start of the essay, King states that the life of the blacks is “crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination” and that the blacks are living on a “lonely island of poverty” in a “vast ocean of material prosperity.” This forces whites into the shoes of blacks, seeing their own actions and inducing remorse for their trespasses. Later, near the end of his speech, King continues to “preach” this point, by stating that he has a dream that “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” Through this, King intends to say that the majority of the civil rights movement does not support the black militants and that the movement is intent on reaching their goals nonviolently. This also makes whites uncomfortable, causing them to think how the blacks are not really the savages they think they are and are instead dignified, honorable people who continue to endure all the cruelty whites have thrown at them.