The crowd gathered at Riverside Church, on April 4th, 1967, grew silent as the preacher took his place; when he spoke, his words would change the morals of a nation. That preacher was Martin Luther King Jr., and the speech he gave that day is known as “Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence.” Throughout his speech King used various strategic elements to reinforce his points and fortify his overall argument. Notably, one component that majorly influences the speech is ethical appeal. One example of this is the following quote: “...I am a preacher by calling...I have major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision.” Being a preacher, his personal experience, gave King the ability to see the war for what it truly was, unjust and cruel. The statement also provides the basic structure of his argument and one reason why he is arguing. “My [next] reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years.” This …show more content…
For example, “There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others have been waging in America.” This states that there are similarities between the Vietnam War and America’s Civil Rights issues, the two focus points of King’s speech. It also presents logical information about the two main topics of the oration. “We were taking black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in South Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.” This provides a logical example of how the Civil Rights movement was actually connected to the war; it states how black men made up the majority of the draft, went to war, and fought to give others the liberties that they themselves weren’t given, which appertains to both the war and the