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Selma Persuasive Speech

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The strength of a speech does not come from the strength of a person’s voice, but the strength comes from the passion of the speaker towards the subject. The film Selma directed by Ana DuVernay, portrays the story of Martin Luther King Jr.’s struggle to achieve voting rights in the south for African Americans. In the film, two speeches that King spoke caught my attention, they are “Give Us the Vote” and “Who Murdered Jimmie Lee Jackson?”. After analyzing both speeches, I have found that both are very similar as they both are relatable by directing his speeches towards his audience emotions, how he persuades his audience to fight for their rights through protest, and how he is able to express his own beliefs in his speeches to further support his argument favoring voting rights. One of the first speeches that King does in the beginning of the film is “Give Us the Vote” which focuses on him telling his audience that they need to fight for their rights. In his speech, King evokes the audience's emotions by describing how children are also being targeted for hate crimes and he introduces this by saying, “We see children become victims of one of the most vicious crimes…within the halls of their own church!”. This is important because he uses children to connect to the audience's emotions, allowing them to understand that if they do not fight for their rights their children will also become victims. Similarly, in his other speech, “Who Murdered Jimmie Lee Jackson?”, King talks

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