Rhetorical Analysis Essay On Equal Opportunity For All

Equal Opportunity for All

The Civil Rights era was a very heartbreaking time during Americas’ dark past. Race was a major topic talked about in the 1960’s. Everyone knew it was there and happening but didn’t really want to talk about it. They just pushed it to the back of their minds. Black individuals like Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks had been taken to jail for only protesting peacefully. They didn’t do anything wrong but during this time period; white authority didn’t really like what they were doing. Persistent and patriotic Lyndon B. Johnson directly speaks to the members of Congress to motivate them to pass a bill, but is also speaking to every American and every person in the whole world, in order to hopefully make African

Americans “equal citizens” so that they can vote and have basic rights like “every other color in America does.” Johnson uses intense and complex sentences designed to make the members of Congress feel the way African Americans did during that time period to effectively achieve his purpose of using rhetorical devices to get into Congress’ head to pass a “well overdue bill” for colored people in America.

Repetition is a very common kind of diction Johnson uses in his speech.

He creates passionate and patriotic diction through the use of repetitive words, and phrases like “American(s),” “America,” and “equal rights.” Johnson is talking to everyone in the world but since his main audience is Americans, that’s why he uses “American(s)” so many times throughout the speech. He uses repetition in order to let Americans acknowledge his ideas and remember his views. He also repeats “equal rights” on multiple occasions in order to express the main idea of his speech. Johnson is explaining to Congress that this bill needs to be passed for every colored person in America for equality between all the races that are in America. Towards the end of his speech, he uses “President” on multiple occasions to identify some power in his speech and also using ethos to give him some

credibility.

Johnson talks to his audience, acknowledging the feelings and suffering of the African Americans and trying to persuade to the Congress that it is a good idea to pass the equal rights bill. Johnson appeals to the disinterested Congress because he is the president of the United States at the time and they should listening to him because what he is saying is important. They are uninterested to what he is saying because the Congress is mostly white and they don’t care about black people. Like why do they want to pass a bill to help people they probably don’t like? By explaining, “There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem… There is only an American problem.” He is telling them that it’s not Negroes’ fault or Southerners or Northerners but it’s the American population as a whole. He urgently wants the bill for equal rights to be passed so colored people in America can have a better life. In the beginning part of his speech, he says, “So it was last week in Selma, Alabama… long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted… and killed.” Johnson is trying to use real-life examples to hopefully catch the attention of Congress and show them what really goes on in the daily life of colored folks.

Johnson creates an optimistic tone towards African Americans. Optimism means “hopeful and confident about the future.” Throughout his whole speech, it’s all optimism towards African Americans’ lives. He provides the Congress with explanations as to why colored Americans need this bill passed like, “We must not wait another eight months before we get a bill. We already waited a hundred years… and the time for waiting is gone.” A previous president, before LBJ, had sent a bill close to this one, a civil rights bill, and “it contained a provision to protect voting rights in Federal elections.” This one is similar to the one before but this one is to “allow men and women to register and vote whatever the color of their skin.” Compassionate, blunt, and sincere are all tones he uses throughout his speech to convey his point to the Congress and to the audience. It shows with complex diction and the use of modifying syntax, like the use of dashes and commas, he wants to drill his idea and main point into Congress’ heads that this is a very urgent that needs to be acted upon.

Using rhetorical devices such as a similes and antitheses help bring out Johnsons main idea in the speech.

A simile means “a direct comparison between two things using like or as.”(3) Johnson says “In Buffalo as well as Birmingham, in Philadelphia as well as Selma.” He compares the cities of Buffalo, New York and Birmingham, Alabama to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Selma, Alabama by all saying that everyone in America, no matter where, are all struggling with equality, and how “it hasn’t been fully kept a promise.” Even though the Emancipation Proclamation, as well as many other official U.S. documents have said African Americans and all men have equal rights. Antithesis means “a person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else.”(2) Johnson uses this in his speech when he says, “there is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights for millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope for faith in our democracy in what is happening tonight.” He’s using a person and thing, directly opposite of each other because at first he is talking about self-satisfaction and denial then faith and hope. This gives the speech some depth and feeling in it to convey his

message.

America today has seen some very racial motivated things but since this speech, life for colored Americans has gotten a lot better. They can vote after that bill passed in 1965 (1), it was signed by Johnson so this does show his speech worked and his use of his diction, syntax, tone, and rhetorical device helped him achieve his goal of getting the bill passed.