King and Douglas Frederick Douglass and Martin

King and Douglas

Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King were truly great men and great public speakers, and King was also a hero and martyr to the cause of nonviolent resistance who quite possibly was assassinated by Southern racists with the complicity of the federal government. As far as ethos is concerned, both had immense moral authority, since Douglass was an escaped slave who became the leading black abolitionist in the North, while Martin Luther King was a Baptist minister who led the civil rights movement from 1955-68. Douglass in his Fourth of July speech used more pathos than King in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, graphically describing the terrible conditions of Southern slavery that he had experienced himself. Unlike King, he did not make a moral argument for nonviolence although he strongly denounced the United States for betraying its own principles of liberty and democracy for all. In their rhetorical situations, both were addressing white audiences that they hoped would be sympathetic to their cause, and they had strong criticism for white Christians who had often been indifferent to the situation of blacks and failed to live up to the highest principles of their faith. King also expressed disappointment with white moderates in the South who were simply standing on the sidelines for the most part and letting the racists and segregationists have their way. Douglass expected nothing from the white people of the South, although he was hoping to inspire Northern whites to take stronger action against slavery and the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law.

Rhetorical Situations

Martin Luther King's pretext for writing a letter was a response to a group of 'moderate' white clergy who had opposed the demonstrations in Birmingham. More than likely, he understood very well that these men were really not all that moderate and had no real sympathy for cause of black civil rights. It did give him an opportunity to condemn all moderate whites in the South for failing to take a stand against the segregationists and Ku Klux Klan, which was so violent in Birmingham that it had the nickname of 'Bombingham'. Even the moderate whites did not want him in the city, called his demonstrations "unwise and untimely" and hoped only that he would leave (King 442).

Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave speaking before a sympathetic white audience in Rochester, New York. Like King, he was attempting to reach out to white moderates or fence-sitters, or at least those willing to give him a hearing. Outright racists, slave owners and their supporters would not have listened to him, of course, while blacks were already all too well aware of their situation. He did not want to completely alienate all whites by simply denouncing America on the Fourth of July, but subtly compared the Founders of the country to abolitionists in that they were also "accounted in their day plotters of mischief, agitators, and rebels, dangerous men," as were King and Douglass in their time (Douglass 554). Douglass made it clear that he fully agreed with their cause and the principles of the American Revolution, for with the Founders "justice, liberty and humanity were 'final', not slavery and oppression," and even George Washington had freed his slaves in his will (Douglass 555).

Argumentative Strategies

King affirmed his deeply-held convictions about Christian nonviolence and social justice, which were regular themes in all his speeches and writings, and regardless of whether the Southern white clergy were listening to him. He was in Birmingham "because injustice is here" and just as Paul "carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town" (King 443). Like Douglass, King believed that "freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed" and "justice too long delayed is justice denied" (King 445). Although the white clergy condemned him for breaking the law, King agreed with Douglass that laws that oppressed or enslaved minorities or degraded the "human personality" were unjust. Blacks in the South had no right to vote or decide in the creation of these laws, and therefore should break them, although "one who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly and with a willingness to accept the penalty" (King 446).

Douglass advocated the same ideas of justice, freedom and morality when it came to the situation of blacks in the United States, although he argued that violence would probably be necessary to end slavery, just as it had been to win independence from Great Britain. Blacks were hardly full and equal citizens of the Republic in 1776, 1852 or even 1963, but both King and Douglass demanded such inclusion. Douglass stated that "I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us" (Douglass 557). For blacks, all the promises of liberty and democracy were false since most of them were still slaves, and even those who escaped to the North were no longer secure because of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. American democracy was a fraud when Northerners were acting as "mere tools and bodyguards to the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina" (Douglass 561).

Ethos and Pathos

As a Christian leader of a nonviolent protest movement, King had tremendous moral authority and would even be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize the next year. He generally refrained from appealing to pathos in this Letter, although he did point out that in the United States, twenty million blacks were "smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society" (King 448 ). He also warned that if nonviolence failed then the country would soon face "a frightening racial nightmare" (King 449). King was just as outraged at the indifference of most white churches as Douglass had been over a century before, and he spoke as the son, grandson and great-grandson of ministers. He noted that "every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust" (King 450).