mlk rhetoric

logos

"We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights."

simile

"The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward gaining political independence…"

metaphor

"Stinging darts of segregation"

logos

"policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters"

metaphor

smothering in an airtight "cage of poverty"

hyperbole

"many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood"

alliteration

speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old

pathos

"see tears welling up in her eyes"

logos

Funtown is closed to colored children.

metaphor

"ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky"

metaphor

"cup of endurance"

logos

Supreme court decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools

rhetorical question

How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?

pathos

"But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will…as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter whey she can't go to the public amusement park…when you are forever fighting a sense of nobodiness"

historical allusion

St. Augustine said that "an unjust law is no law at all."

historical allusion

"To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law."

logos

"All segregation statues are unjust because segregation distorts the sound and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority."

logos

"A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had not part in enacting or devising the law."

rhetorical question

"Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?"

ethos

"I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit."

ethos

"I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law."

Biblical allusion

"It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar.."

Historical allusions

early Christian VS Roman Empire; Socrates; Boston Tea Party

Historical allusion

"We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal;"..

parallelism

"…segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful."

parallelism

"A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law."

antithesis

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

anaphora

"This is difference made legal…This is sameness made legal"

anaphora and epistrophe

"I beg God to forgive me….I beg you to forgive me."

oxymoron

"ungrammatical profundity"

irony

"I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unnamed, nonviolent Negroes."

anaphora

"Perhaps I was too optimistic. Perhaps I expected too much."