Ethos In The Declaration Of Independence

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The Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal,” yet our country bears a dark past when it comes to racism. Even though all blacks were supposed to be “free” that didn’t quite happen. Under a corrupt law system they were abused, discriminated against, people were very cruel to them. And of course they tried doing things about it like boycotts and what not, but Martin Luther King changed everything. How did he do it? How did he change the perspective of all those people? He spoke about the segregation and discrimination of blacks that was taking place in our nation. Demonstrating harsh examples of how cruel people were to the blacks, making the whites feel emotional. Luther helped them picture it so vivid in their minds by using powerful metaphors of the horror of slavery. Luther did a great job using pathos, which is what persuaded the whites to no longer hate Negros and hate racism instead. For example; his first sentences of the passage he says “I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation”. That’s all ready something big “history of our nation” people are interested in knowing how it will impact the nation and when Luther threw all those things out there it …show more content…

As he grabs everyone’s attention to start his speech by starting off saying “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the emancipation proclamation.” The way he used this brought authority into his speech because Lincoln was a great president who had the power to do a lot. He empowered the people of America threw the civil war and gained there trust. He established a sense of freedom so by Luther invoking the authority and civil rights of Lincoln that is a major icebreaker for him using ethos. It helped him to initiate the trustworthiness of the people listening to