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Pathos In Martin Luther King's Speech

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Martin Luther King Jr. is known as one of the most influential civil rights activists to date. His speeches and teachings have become some of the most popular among scholars and people interested in Civil Rights. He become the spokesman for nonviolent acts of protest and has since influenced millions of people in their journey for their rights. There are many reasons as to why he was and still is a very influential leader. The three main reasons are his uses of Aristotle’s three Rhetorical appeals: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. Aristotle’s Ethos is the use of the persons credibility or character to persuade the audience to follow them. Pathos is the use of appealing to one’s emotions in hopes that they will follow and trust what you are telling them. Lastly, Logos is the use of logic to portray your reasoning in hopes that the audience will …show more content…

has shown his ability to use all of these throughout his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In this letter, his use of persuasion tends to lean more towards Pathos and Logos than it does …show more content…

Martin Luther King Jr. was a priest before he was an activist. This fact gave him some shred of credibility among the clergymen he was addressing, no matter how small. Martin as a person was known to be very kind and warm to those who had met him. His use of nonviolent protests instead of violent protests proved to many that he was not just some random angry black person off the street. His eloquence and way of speaking proved that he was a smart man with brilliant ideas. His words had a credibility to them that those before him did not. He was an intelligent man who knew that screaming and physical violence would get him no where and so he turned to speeches and using emotion and logic to sway others opinions to match his own. All of his ideas and actions have reasoning behind them that lends to his persona of being a credible source of

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