Rhetorical Analysis Of Black Power By Stokely Carmichael

Civil rights has been a very harsh and long fight for those condemned to the title of Black, colored, or negro. Slavery in our country dates back all the way to 1619, where Africans were sold from Africa, to help colonize the new Americas’. Slavery then continued throughout the centuries, until those who were slaves, rose up against the unethical view on slavery. With this, certain people began to push against the ‘lost’ civil rights of the colored people. Two of these people include the well-known civil rights activist and as well as the well-known Stokely Carmichael. Both of these men voiced their opinions through various speeches and protests in which they put their view with the new civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr., wrote “I

Stokely Carmichael was a black civil rights activist, who gave his speech, “Black Power” on the twenty-ninth of October, 1966 to other civil rights activists on the basis of black power, or black rights. Carmichael's tone for this speech is most noticeably empowering, and thought-provoking. Carmichael’s main use in his speech was his choice of diction. He created a vast majority of degrading words towards those who were white, such as, “That failure is due to the white’s incapacity to deal with their own problems inside their own communities.” Here, Carmichael is degrading the white population, in which they can not deal with their own problems. Although Carmichael uses many more of these negative statements, he also relies on the use of logos in his speech. “In order to escape that oppression we must wield the group power we have, not the individual power that this country sets as the criterion under which a man may come into it. That’s what is called integration.” and “A man is born free. You may enslave a man after he is born free... The only thing white people can do is stop denying black people their freedom.” These are both examples of Carmichaels use of logos, to convince his audience the need for black rights. Since his audience is mainly colored, The logistical side of this connects with them, as they understand and believe this is how colors are treated, creating a very influential and empowering speech for