Letter From Birmingham Jail Logos

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Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were both African American leaders of the Africa-American Civil Rights Movement during the 1960’s. Although slavery had been abolished after the Civil War, Africans were still treated unequally. Both Dr. King and Malcolm X fought to gain equality between Africans and the white Americans through the use of rhetorical techniques throughout their discourses. By examining “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr. and “The Ballot or the Bullet” by Malcolm X, we observe their reliance on logos and appeal to logos in order to construct their arguments. Dr. King effectively uses analogies to depict his views and beliefs to the Clergymen. By making biblical relations between him and prophets in…show more content…
Since he is talking to an entirely different audience where his religious beliefs may not be in-line theirs, it wouldn’t be ideal to discuss their different beliefs and instead uses Kairos to infuse his argument with logos to convince the audience of the problems with segregation and the necessity to fight for equality. Malcolm X discusses how they don’t have civil rights which were pertinent in the lives of all the audience and allows them to relate to the time and logically leads to supporting his ideas against segregation. Malcolm X denounces the actions of the white population, without any attempts to appeal to them; his approach to the civil rights issue is in complete opposition to the tactics of other civil rights leaders of his time, such as MLK. Rather than trying to integrate the black community into the white, he focused on the complete reconstruction between the two populations: he didn 't want the African-Americans to integrate into the white hotels; he wanted African-Americans to own the hotels. He believed that it was entirely necessary for the black population to break the psychological, cultural, economic, and political dependency of their oppressors. Although African-Americans are already considered citizens of the United States,…show more content…
Malcolm X’s use of such radical ideas and solutions to the civil rights problems of his day, and MLK’s use of historical examples they captivate their audience and through logos and convince them of their views. Malcolm X completely shatters his listeners’ beliefs, using a roundabout form of rhetoric: he uses harsh language that seems to degrade his audience, while, at the same time, he increases their self-confidence subconsciously through their emotions and through logos builds in their minds the necessity to fight for equality. MLK uses analogies and enthymeme to relate to his audience the importance of equality in order to construct logos in the mind of his audience and convince them of the logic behind back equality. Through the use of appropriate elements of logos, MLK and Malcolm X appeal to logos to make an effective

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