Rhetorical Analysis Of Martin Luther King Equality

Would you fight for something you believe in even if people told you not to? Martin Luther King believed in equality. He was arrested sitting in a 5x8 cell reading the newspaper and saw a statement made by eight white Alabama clergymen who were talking against King and his methods he was using to fight for the freedom of equality. Martin Luther King said once that, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” When King sat down to write his letter he knew that the only way for the clergyman to really understand how badly inequality is affecting the black nation he would have to say it in a way that made his audience look at the circumstance in a way they could understand and relate too. King uses metaphors and rhetorical questions to get his audience attention so they can stand up for the inequality that the black nation has been facing ever since the slave days. ‘’There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs …show more content…
Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were their voices of support when tired bruised, and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"(Paragraph 9 lines 4-6)
In Kings Letter he uses rhetorical questions to point out the irony of the churches that were supposed to fight for justice but were silent about racial inequality. King asks the questions that make the wheel in your brain start to turn as you are thinking about why racial injustice and why it’s actually happening. He wanted he audience to feel the passion he had for these questions and how injustice the whites are to the blacks and that they are ready to stand up for equal rights. They are no different than you or me, they have eyes, ears, legs, and arms a nose etc. they also have feelings