Rhetorical Analysis Essay On The Ballot Or The Bullet

Malcolm X: This man’s name is a shot at the beliefs of the typical white man of his own era. The —"X" symbolizes "the rejection of ‘slave-names' and the absence of an inherited African name to take its place." Likewise, in his speech "The Ballot or the Bullet", Malcolm X harshly criticizes the behavior of the white populace, having no intention to appeal to the ideals of the white community oppressing his people; his method of attack toward the issue of civil rights is in absolute defiance of the strategies used by other civil rights activists of his era, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. King, in his “Letter From A Birmingham Jail” attempts to protect the behavior of his organization while also trying to call upon the community of both the black

Honestly, after doing some further research it would be tough to describe X as militant like I had heard throughout my life. Now clearly X’s concepts of freedom and such were much more severe compared to King. For instance, I believed it to be intriguing that X stated that he “didn’t consider himself an American,” (X 1), while King’s letter suggested that King had already considered himself an American who has been deprived of his freedom. While Malcolm X expected that extreme measures might have been unavoidable to assure that blacks gain their civil rights, X suggested to only use said extreme measures following the exhaustion of peaceful methods. However, the very fact that X was ready to use these violent methods in order to gain civil rights, contrasting to King who never was going to use these methods, makes X that much more radical than King. As for who had more of an impact, the main reason King was more salient was because he spoke to both white and black communities and they both responded whether positively or negatively while, X only spoke to the black community and showed no love toward his white counterparts effectively making most people in the white community less responsive to him. Nevertheless, these two leaders were extremely influential in triumph that was the Civil Rights