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Rhetorical Analysis Of Barma Obama Speech

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In his speech, Barack Obama was able to tie the historical legacy of what happened in Selma to both the trials and tribulations present in the United States today. In 1965, Martin Luther King Jr’s Christian Leadership Conference led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams, made a point to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to establish voting rights for African Americans. The voting act passed later in the year but not before an event referred to as “Bloody Sunday” occurred, where the 600 peaceful activists who were marching, were stopped on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, over the Alabama River, and greeted by signs indicative of the Ku Klux Klan, confederates, and authorities who terrorized and assaulted these people. These people were struck, assaulted, pummeled by the hooves of horses, violated with tear gas, etc. yet they remained peaceful and goal oriented. They did not fight back and the events that occurred were shown in the media developing a group of advocates who ended up helping the cause. Barack Obama gave his speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of this “Bloody Sunday” on that very bridge. He begins by honoring John Lewis and then details the abuse that John himself experienced on “Bloody Sunday” coupled with a doctor’s description of what tear gas can do to the body, increasing both the pathos and logos of his speech. He says that the “air was thick with doubt” which alluded to the tear gas that he also specified previously. He also evokes immediate ethos being

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