Rhetorical Analysis Of I Ve Been To The Mountain Top

Well known American Baptist minister and activist, Martin Luther King Jr., optimizes the call to action for his fellow community to resist the unjust laws of the time in his speech, I’ve Been to the Mountain Top. When this speech was delivered, the act of discrimination was worsening, calling for a reform by the colored community. At that point many small victories had been made but Martin Luther King was not satisfied. In this speech, Martin Luther King emphasizes the issue of injustice and the need for immediate change. King specifically creates his exigence by relaying to the audience that the sole purpose of his message is to motivate people to act in a calm manner and stop to create change in the altered world (I’ve Been to The Mountain Top). He adopts an urgent and optimistic tone in order to appeal to his fellow community. In order to …show more content…
By using specific examples to how the audience can create a road for reform, King allows the audience to be proactive while partaking in his speech. By doing this the audience remains more emotionally invested into what King is saying. He also provides ways for the audience to understand why he is qualified to speak to them. This allows the audience to open up to King and understand where he is coming from. Throughout King’s speech he remains humble and well grounded. He never puts himself above the audience, instead, he makes himself part of the audience. Martin Luther King Jr. paved the road for many victories for the African-American community. Such as, ending the legal segregation of, as well as, gaining the African-American right to vote. After delivering this speech, the next day, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. To this day, King is credited as one of the greatest African-American leaders of his