I Have A Dream Ethos Pathos Logos

King’s speech was so successful because of the tense social mood at the time. It gave black activists hope and a vision of the future while it made whites humiliated of their actions causing them to turn over a new leaf by helping the movement become successful. King’s speech lasted just 17 minutes, but in that 17 minutes he was able to influence the actions of generations to come. King carefully structures his speech to appeal to the different types of audience, supporting it with the three rhetorical modes of logos, pathos, and ethos which are covered with different rhetorical tropes and schemes, marking King’s name in history books. “I have a dream” was intended for 3 different audiences. First was the average black male that was being discriminated against on a daily basis, then the average whites who had thoughts typical of the time, and the militants who argued blacks were malicious and wanted the civil rights movement as deadly as …show more content…
These two modes together help persuade people that whites have broken their promises to blacks. King says that blacks were given “a bad check,” a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds” despite the “promissory note” of the “Constitution and Declaration of Independence”. King mentions that racial equality can only be achieved until “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” This causes the audience to think that racial segregation is against morale values. The one example of logos in his speech is when he mentions the Emancipation Proclamation that Lincoln signed 100 years before. The Emancipation Proclamation declared slaves free and that blacks were to no longer to be treated like property. King utilizes this piece of evidence to show that even Lincoln, one of the most respected men in US history, supported the freeing of blacks, forming an ethos appeal through the logos of Lincoln’s Emancipation