Contrasting the violently didactic tone and harsh diction used in Malcolm X’s “The Ballot or the Bullet” with the carefully selected diction and passionately pacifist tone of Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, demonstrates the different approaches taken to fight for African Americans civil rights in the 1960s. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King’s difference in tone and diction is in part due to their different audiences and occasions. Since Malcolm X is speaking to a group of “brothers, and sisters, friends and enemies” who have gathered in Cleveland, Ohio to hear him speak about politics in relation to African American civil rights, his harsh diction and violently didactic tone are appropriate for the situation. Martin Luther
