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Rhetorical Devices In Lyndon B Johnson's We Shall Overcome Speech

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“We Shall Overcome” was a speech given by former president Lyndon B. Johnson. He named his speech “we shall overcome” because it was a favorite song during the 1960s. The primary purpose of this speech was for the members of Congress to pass a Voting Right act to allows African American the right to vote. There was a lot of racial issues that were happening at the time but Black people wanting to be able to vote. This speech was meant to impact both the Congress and every American. This speech has a lot of rhetorical devices. We are going to be analyzing calm of value, Logos, and hortative sentence In “We Shall Overcome” Johnson used calm of value. The calm of value is to argue if something is good or bad, right or wrong. In this whole speech former president Johnson is arguing that the Voting Right Act. is a good thing for the US.”All Americans must have the privileges of citizenship, regardless of race, and they are going to have those privileges of citizenship regardless of race” and that "All men are created equal." it a good thing because the constitution says it is and because everyone has human rights. …show more content…

Logos is using specific details, facts, examples, statistic, or expert testimony to back them up. In this speech, Johnson uses a lot of examples from the Constitution or using the word constitution. “There is no Constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong--deadly wrong--to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country.” Johnson also quotes the constitution to make his point. “The Constitution says that no person should be kept from voting because of his race or his color.” In this quote former president Johnson is using the example form the constitution because he wants people to know that America was built by people who believed in freedom and for everyone to be treated

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“We shall overcome” is a speech by Lyndon Baines Johnson on March 15, 1965. This speech took place one week after Selma. “We shall overcome” was created to convince the Members of Congress, into joining him in his fight against racism by approving a bill meant to abolish racist voting restrictions. Lyndon Johnson’s speech to convince Members of congress to help him pass a bill to abolish racist voting restrictions by using a strong tone to create the sense that what he was saying was important, and in his speech he used Pathos and Logos to make the crowd feel sympathy for the black community because of the harsh truth.

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Lyndon B Johnson’s "We Shall Overcome" speech demonstrates how Johnson used his platform as president to address the issue of African American rights at the time. The speech was given in Washington DC on March 15th, 1965 to the United States Congress. Johnson was speaking about the injustices that African Americans were facing, after a violent scene had broke out in Alabama a week before. He first spoke out on the social injustices in the country that had been ignored, and later announced his plans to end them. Johnson’s speech was based on true knowledge and had the goal of expanding Congress and America’s knowledge on the problems facing the country.

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