Eulogy For The Martyred Children Speech Analysis

In Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Eulogy for the Martyred Children”, and in Eugene Patterson’s “A Flower for the Graves”, both men use their passages to lay blame upon the people. King uses blame to implant the idea of change, that the death of these girls is the time to go and redeem their mistakes. He blames the politicians who “fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism”. Martin Luther King knew of his impact on the community, he knew that many people would know his speech than the people that were gathered for the funeral, so he blamed the politicians, because he knew they would read the eulogy, and he wanted them to know that they held some of the blame for the deaths of the girls. Eugene Patterson also does something similar, except instead of blaming the politicians, he blamed the white south as a whole for electing them. This

He does this mostly to spur all of the black community who has remained inactive in response to segregation into action. He wishes to inspire an uproar within the Negro men that will be enough to change the unfair legislation against the black people. Patterson takes a different approach, blaming the white south for allowing it to happen. Patterson, however, creates a distinction between the white south and the perpetrators, even going so far as to call them mad dogs. He does blame the people for “creating a climate for child-killing” (A Flower for the Graves), but not for the act itself. This shows that Patterson believes the people who murdered the children are separate from the average white man. This creates even more impact, as Patterson widened his target audience by differentiating between the white man and the murderers, but he has also lessened his impact by lifting the guilt that may have felt otherwise. King spoke of the white south, but only