Rhetorical Analysis Of Martin Luther King's Speech

On the 4th of April, 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a compelling speech on the disastrous outcomes of America’s war with Vietnam with broader implications on racial divides. He had long since preached on ending segregation to heal the rigid racial dichotomy which was pervasive throughout American culture for many years ever since 1865 when slavery was abolished. The speech came near the end of an illustrious career spanning multiple states where he successfully lead peaceful revolts against the socially unfair Jim Crow laws. Years after the famous “I Have a Dream” speech, King still had social issues he wished to eradicate, notably those concerning human rights violations such as the Vietnam War. The destruction from the war began

Repeatedly, King referenced the atrocities that occurred overseas in the futile war to sway the audience’s opinion towards him while simultaneously tying in unequal racial aspects of the war because he recognized that most of his audience was Christian and African American. He references how in the war, both the Vietnamese and Americans perpetuate “such cruel manipulation of the the poor,” tricking them both into fighting the war and dying for their mother country (King 2). Both countries desperately needed to win the war, so they chose to sacrifice the wellbeing of the the poor of the countries, jeopardizing hundreds of thousands of lives in the process. They tricked the poor into envisioning their country’s necessity to win, drafting thousands upon thousands into their respective militaries and sending them into almost-certain death. King appealed to the audience’s sympathy for the poor by referencing how the countries dealt with their issues by putting their lives at stake. Moreover, King even divulged horrendous accounts of soldiers who “see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers” (4). He purposefully explored the abhorrent aspects of the Vietnamese conflict to show the listeners how deep the conflict infringed upon their moral grounds. King expressed how these directly conflicted with their Christian beliefs of maintaining the dignity of all human life and brotherhood. Additionally, he maintained how disparate the racial division is between the military divisions that have very high death rates (King 9). Realizing that his audience is chiefly African American, King exposed the inequalities in military divisions, hoping for the audience to realize that it is up to them to generate change in the unequal world. Once they realize that correction