In the 1960’s, the United States was a country divided due to racial injustice and the unfair voting system. African Americans at the time had been given their rights to freedom, but unfortunately, not to voting. On March 15, 1965, in Washington D.C., President Lyndon B. Johnson had decided to address this issue to Congress and to bring up and possibly pass the Civil Rights Bill. The speech, “We Shall Overcome”, emphasized his desire to end the inequality plaguing the nation. President Johnson enthralled his audience by using pathos, real life stories and examples of the issue, and parallelism. President Johnson’s audience to which he delivered the speech to was members of Congress, speaker of the House of Representatives, and the President John F. Kennedy. Johnson was speaking to the leaders of the nation. The men and women he delivered his speech to were in charge of making all the decisions that would affect the country and its people. However, Johnson did not only refer to the people present in the room. When he says, “I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy” (Johnson, 1965), he is addressing normal, every day…show more content… In the middle of his speech, he started to how human a politician can be. He decided that the only way to get a point across is to be able to relate to his audience of not only government leaders, but also the nation’s people. The speech is called, “We Shall Overcome” not “They Will Overcome”. He says, “But let each of us look within our hearts and our own communities, and let each of us put our shoulders to the wheel to root out injustice wherever it exists” (Johnson, 1965). This phrase includes a lot of terms like “us” and “our”. He puts himself into as a part of one of the many concerned people of America. He is showing that he is just a normal person, with no incentive, who wants to fight for African American equal rights and a just voting
