One of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speeches “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” was delivered back in April 3, 1968 to the people at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. In his speech, King was still strong in his fight to end racism and push forward as he shares his plans with the people of Memphis. Clearly, he is confident in what he is saying in his speech and can easily persuade his followers to listen and confide in what he is telling them. Instilling confidence and hope in his followers was what he needed to keep his marches and protests going and knew that being persuasive was key to reaching his goal of ending segregation. Three examples that King uses to persuade his audience is by appealing to their emotions, using repetition in his lines, and using logic to show and share his knowledge. King uses these terms to his advantage in order to be very persuasive and to keep his audience interested and more importantly, be able to relate to their everyday lives. The one thing that King uses with all his methods of being persuasive is his tone. He uses a strong, loud voice that can be heard that shows his confidence in what he is saying which will immediately draw in the attention of the audience. Using emotion to be persuasive might just the easiest way to grab the audiences’ attention and help them relate to what is being said. King uses emotion throughout his entire speech and there is no doubt that it may cause one to become very emotional such as sad, upset, angry, humorous or could really get someone fired up and ready to take action right along side him. King said in his speech ,” Now we're going to march again, and we've got to march again, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be and force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of God's children here suffering sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights wondering how this thing is going to come out“ (Paragraph 18). His use of emotion lets his followers know that he too is just a normal African American man who wants to make a difference and he surely lets the audience know that he wants to do this together, and not just be a leader. Emotion is really brought out towards the end of King’s speech when he brings up his recent near death experience about being stabbed at a book signing by a “demented black woman” (King Paragraph 40). She had stabbed him and he was rushed to the hospital and the x-rays showed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of his aorta which is the main artery, and if that had been punctured then he would have bled to death. (King, Paragraph 18) King uses his personal story to relate to his audience because there is tons of people everyday that have near death experiences just like he had, and this appeals strongly to emotions. The use of repetition is another tactic that King uses to keep his audience and persuade them. Using repetition is something that keeps repeating and so it will naturally stay in ones head longer which is probably why King chose to use this method. In the beginning of his speech, he begins taking his audience back in time and during this is when he first uses his repetition. “But I wouldn’t stop there” (King Paragraphs 3-8). King uses this quote in order to keep telling his audience about all the great times he would want to travel back to and how he wouldn’t want to stop, but keep going to the next great thing. “If I had sneezed” (King Paragraphs 47-52). This quote is also repetition but could also appeal to emotion as well because if he would have sneezed when he was stabbed, then his artery would have been punctured and he would have been killed. King uses a few scenarios of what he has accomplished since the stabbing and if he had sneezed, they would most likely have never happened. An example of one of these quotes would be,” If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in interstate
