King's Speech: The Plight Of The Negroes

Submitted By katielynnhoneycutt12
Words: 638
Pages: 3

The most important of any speech is its structure – something which King does extremely well in his speech by showing the plight of the Negroes, showing the truth of the civil rights movement and that there is hope in the future. Basically, the speech’s structure is intended to appeal to the three types of audiences likely to be listening to King’s speech – the average blacks who are discriminated against, the average whites who harbor thoughts typical of that time and the militant blacks and racist supremacists who argue that blacks are evil and the civil rights movement is violent. In the first part of his speech, King, cleverly paints a picture of the plight of the Negroes and thoroughly describes their condition. For example, in the start of the essay, King says that the life of the blacks is “crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination” and that the blacks are living on a “lonely island of poverty” in the midst of a “vast ocean of material prosperity.” This first makes the whites realize how the blacks are in a terrible plight and make them dislike their actions while striking deep into the hearts of blacks as this clearly paints out their situation. Further on, King continues to emphasize this by continuing to list examples of the Negroes’ problems, which continues to strike at the Negroes as they are stirred by descriptions of their sadness and makes whites uncomfortable as they think that they are the ones responsible for this. Also, King makes references to how America has literally broken their promise to the Negroes by refusing them the rights granted in the Constitution. Therefore, the plight of the Negroes is not their fault; it is the fault of the whites. One problem with the civil rights movement, however, is that many enemies of the movement argue that activists of the movement act aggressively and use violent methods to seek their goals. This has caused many people to lose their support for their movement. In order to stop this, King, who was a public face for the movement at the time, states that the Negroes must conduct their struggle “on the high plane of dignity and discipline” and must not allow their “creative protest to degenerate into physical violence” for the “marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people.”