Salmanfarsi
1
Molla Salmanfarsi
Professor Robert Gmelin
English 302
25 October 2016
Comparison of MLK’s Works
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lived as one of the greatest social and religious leaders in a country
where a group of its citizens had to endure excruciating conditions of disenfranchisement, inferiority, and
degradation to a second class citizenship by reasons of race, color, or origin. King wrote several letters and
gave inspirational speeches during his lifetime and strived to persuade governmental leaders in an effort to
condemn all acts of racial discrimination. Specifically, two of King’s works, the “Letter from Birmingham
Jail” and the “I Have a Dream Speech” lays an acute understanding of the power of rhetoric and a keen
awareness of audience. What makes these documents so powerful is the manner in which he shifts his tone
and rhetoric many times throughout each text in order to address a specific audience. Since many of Martin
Luther King‘s arguments are based on emotion and a challenge to tradition and culture, it is most useful to
look at the ways he uses modes of persuasion to certain subsets of his audience while making arguments
that challenged conceptions of these traditions that America is based on.
In King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” addressed to the Clergymen from Birmingham Prison, he
uses the rhetorical appeal of ethos, pathos, and logos throughout the letter and language that invokes a sense
to the clergymen‘s hypocrisy. Once he accomplishes this, the argument for the protests broadens out as his
tone shifts and begins to include the larger agreeing audience directly. Richard P. Fulkerson, an Associate
Professor of English and Coordinator of Composition in East Texas State University explains more clearly
in one of his quarterly journal speeches that King‘s “letter was designed apparently as a refutative response
Salmanfarsi
2
to the clergymen.” Furthermore, Fulkerson states that King‘s letter “actually addresses two audiences
simultaneously; the limited and precisely defined group of eight clergymen and a broader and less exactly
defined group of intelligent and religious moderates” (123). King starts off the letter with “My Dear Fellow
Clergymen,” (Rottenberg 812) and establishes his credibility to be on the same level as the clergymen by the
use of ethos. King then uses the appeal of pathos by explaining that he was in Birmingham not only because
he has “organizational ties,” but more basically, he is “in Birmingham because injustice is here.” This
portrays a strong message to the clergymen that he has the credibility on the matter of injustice. Moreover,
the use of logos should be observed when King writes that “it is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking
place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city‘s white power structure left the Negro
community with no alternative” (Rottenberg 813). The phrasing of this statement indicates that King was
sympathetic towards the “Negro community,” and that he believes that the “white power structure” was at
