Logan Jack
Dr. Cynthia Pengilly
English 1101, 5:00
2 February 2017
Rhetorical Analysis of “We Shall Overcome” Since the birth of The United States in 1776 this country has fought many battles. No battle has been bigger than the internal battle for African American civil rights, which made a country that was once unified split into two separate pieces and had a war fought over it. This struggle for civil rights lasted over many president’s terms and up until Lyndon B. Johnson, the thirty-sixth president of The United States, African American citizens never had the unopposed right to vote. Johnson’s speech, “We Shall Overcome”, and the Voting Rights Act he passes directly after enforces the 15th amendment and removes discrimination towards blacks at the voting booths. Johnson uses pathos, a form a rhetoric, to play on the emotions of the congress and the nation to end voting discrimination. Lyndon B. Johnson uses the pathetic appeal of patriotism to unify congress and the nation and convince them to pass a bill that eliminates barriers to the right to vote. When talking about the problem in our nation’s hands, Johnson says, “There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no …show more content…
He does this by using many different forms of pathetic appeal such as, patriotism, storytelling, unifying language, and religion. In the end, his forms of rhetoric worked on the nation and on congress as he got the bill passed and signed the Voting Rights Act into place later that year on August 6th, 1965. The Voting Rights Act finally overcame the barriers that had been placed at the state and local levels to prevent African Americans from voting (History.com Staff). Because of this, African Americans were able to exercise their right to vote which was originally given to them ninety-five years earlier under the fifteenth
Dr. Cynthia Pengilly
English 1101, 5:00
2 February 2017
Rhetorical Analysis of “We Shall Overcome” Since the birth of The United States in 1776 this country has fought many battles. No battle has been bigger than the internal battle for African American civil rights, which made a country that was once unified split into two separate pieces and had a war fought over it. This struggle for civil rights lasted over many president’s terms and up until Lyndon B. Johnson, the thirty-sixth president of The United States, African American citizens never had the unopposed right to vote. Johnson’s speech, “We Shall Overcome”, and the Voting Rights Act he passes directly after enforces the 15th amendment and removes discrimination towards blacks at the voting booths. Johnson uses pathos, a form a rhetoric, to play on the emotions of the congress and the nation to end voting discrimination. Lyndon B. Johnson uses the pathetic appeal of patriotism to unify congress and the nation and convince them to pass a bill that eliminates barriers to the right to vote. When talking about the problem in our nation’s hands, Johnson says, “There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no …show more content…
He does this by using many different forms of pathetic appeal such as, patriotism, storytelling, unifying language, and religion. In the end, his forms of rhetoric worked on the nation and on congress as he got the bill passed and signed the Voting Rights Act into place later that year on August 6th, 1965. The Voting Rights Act finally overcame the barriers that had been placed at the state and local levels to prevent African Americans from voting (History.com Staff). Because of this, African Americans were able to exercise their right to vote which was originally given to them ninety-five years earlier under the fifteenth