Letter To A Birmingham Jail Rhetorical Analysis

Cameron Delman
English Composition II
Professor Moreland
3, March 2015
The Productivity of Peace In two shining examples of rhetorical power “A letter to a Birmingham Jail” and “Malcom X’s debate at the Oxford Union” The two great leaders of the civil rights movement outline their platforms and justify their philosophies in regards to how the movement should go about achieving societal change. Although the civil rights movement was brought to national attention by the combined work of MLK and Malcom X, the rhetorical strategies employed by the two are quite different and hold varying degrees of effectiveness. These social justice warriors did not receive an equal amount of respect nor did their ideas have an equal amount of impact because
The Rhetorical situation is only part of a broader system of analysis developed by the Rhetorician Loyd Bitzer, known as The Bitzerian Method. In this method a text is broken down into several components. First their must always be an exigence, or issue that needs resolving. Furthermore the exigence is only rhetorical when it can be solved in a positive way using persuasion. So an exigence is not merely just a problem, it is a very unique issue that has the potential to be resolved if only the right people can be persuaded to take action. Understanding that an exigence is only rhetorical when the solution lies in persuasion translates to the the second component of Bitzer’s method which is the audience. In this case the audience is not defined to mean a group of people passively receiving a verbal message. Rather in the context of Bitzer’s method an audience means the group of people with the power to initiate change, the group that must be targeted to resolve the exigence. The third and final component of Bitzer’s
This has the effect of casting shame on the American legal and social structure, that a man born and raised in the US would be so alienated that he would disown himself from his native cultural identity speaks volumes of the problems that nation faces. Malcom follows this up with a statement of his thesis giving the famous “by any means necessary” remark and clearly stating his primary beliefs. Later on in his speech Malcom begins to paint a picture for his audience of the horrors racism can produce, vividly depicting the many types of police brutality protesters faced. Further driving home the point that enough is enough, his people need to stand up for themselves and end the suffering. But it is in his next line that Malcom clearly states what I believe is ultimately why he was eclipsed by Martin Luther King. He says “when one is moderate in the pursuit of justice….than he is a sinner” disregarding his use of historical figures to bolster his argument in favor of extremism we are left with the statement that moderation is not only ineffective but immoral. Now placing aside the high value Christians place on human life for Malcom was a muslim, it is difficult to agree with his contention as extremism would destroy any potential support from the white moderate. In other words it takes moderation to win the hearts and minds of the white moderate. And without the white moderate, no change can every