Rhetorical Analysis On Angela Davis

Angela Davis is a significant activist, educator, and author who rose to prominence during the 1960s and 1970s for her work in powerful movements for black, female, and class equality both domestically and internationally. She has often given speeches at rallies and been invited to speak at various forums and universities, using all platforms to expose the wrongdoings of the United States government as well as spur viewers to fight for a more equal world. In her speeches, Davis primarily utilizes rhetorical strategies of specific exemplification, a fraternal tone, and hypophoras to achieve effective and meaningful impacts on her audiences. Angela Davis utilizes exemplification in her works to demonstrate the oppressions and injustices she describes with specific and individual examples, increasing the validity of

In doing this, it demonstrates the extent of the problem with even one of these examples, ultimately making the movement seem more pressing. By utilizing and often detailing the circumstances of her examples, not just listing statistics or calling for change without a reason why, she makes the need for the movement seem more realistic and important even for the sake of one of these individuals. Not only does Davis implore these examples to prompt greater necessity for change, but she uses them to justify her descriptions of the status quo. In her speech “The Liberation of Our People”, delivered at a Black Panther Party rally in 1969, she critiques American intervention in the Vietnam War for both its dramatic implications for repression internationally as well as domestically. As soon as the second paragraph of this speech, she proves this in offering the instance of Chairman Bobby Seale, who was chained, gagged, and sentenced to years in prison in an act of oppression from the United