Dr. Martin Luther King

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A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE TYPES OF PUBLIC APPEATS MADE BY DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., AND ELDRIDGE CLEAVER
by
CHARLES
B.A.
,
S.
MILES
Fort Hays Kansas State College, 1964
A MASTER'S THESIS
submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree
MASTER OF ARTS
Department of Speech
KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY Manhattan, Kansas

1969
Approved by:
ior Professor
7~Y
/U9
,lr
CONTENTS
/ft 3
CHAPTER
I.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION
DRAMATIC RATIOS WITHIN EPIDEICTIC AND
II.
III.
IV.
41
CONHTITSTON
104
111
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER
INTRODUCTION
In an age when various forms of control are exerted
over the population of this world, it does not seem improper

to ask, "How are people motivated to do what they do?"
"in
what way do leaders persuade, cajole, or force people to act

as a cohesive unit?"
Perhaps part of the answer to these
questions lies within the realm of rhetoric.
Rhetoric as a
discipline has been defined as persuasion traditionally, but

a twentieth century scholar, Kenneth Burke, states that per-
suasion "involves choice, will; it is directed to a man only

insofar as he is free."
Only if man is free to act will

Burke states that insofar as a man
persuasion influence him.
must do something, "rhetoric is unnecessary, its work being

done by the nature of things, though often these necessities
are not of a natural origin, but come from necessities imposed by man-made conditions."
If the actions of a man are re-
stricted, Burke believes that rhetoric is not persuasive, but

"seeks rather to have a formative effect upon attitude."
Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (New York: World Publishing Company, 1950), p. 575"^
2
3
The
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives
p.
574.
p. 574.
That is, the purpose of rhetoric in a restrictive atmosphere

is more directed towards attitude than action.
In his book, A Grammar of Motives , Kenneth Burke
develops a dramatis tic pentad that is designed to analyze

five forms of motivation:
scene, act, agent, agency, and
purpose.
In the preceding paragraph it was noted that "insofar
as (man) is free" (scene), rhetoric is persuasive (purpose).
However, if "the actions of a man are restricted" (scene),
rhetoric "seeks rather to have a formative effect upon attitude" (purpose).

Thus, the purpose of rhetoric has been
altered by the scene of which it was a part (scene-purpose

ratio).
In the more restrictive scene, rhetoric seems to
adhere to the principles of epideictic oratory ("praised or

censures").
In the less restrictive scene, rhetoric seems
to adhere to the principles of deliberative oratory ("urges

us either to do or not to do something") as defined by
Aristotle in Book I, Chapter
of the Rhetoric
The latter
scene persuades men to commit an out-and-out action, whereas
in the initial scene persuasion is directed towards attitude.

The forms of address employed by speakers have affected
men since the foundation of communal living.
Public oratory
has driven men to accept (attitude) a system of political con-
trol or to fight (act) to perserve it.

figures as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
,
Such formidable and Eldridge Cleaver
have sought to persuade men to overcome discriminational

actions from the society in which they live.
The type of
oratory (deliberative or epideictic) employed by each of these
men seems to have been the result of the scene-act or the

scene-agent ratio.
The intent of the author of this thesis is to examine
the oratory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Eldridge
Cleaver in terms of the scene within which each man spoke and
the apparent purpose of their oratory.
The reasons for basing
this study on the speeches of King and Cleaver are (1) these
men are contemporaries, (2) both of them are engaged in

directing a minority group in rebellion, (3) the political
philosophies of each man are exceedingly different, and (4)
much of their effectiveness as leaders can be attributed to

their strong oral appeals.
The literature of Kenneth Burke is basic to this study

in that his philosophy of dramatism permits an investigator
to separate motivational appeals into five distinct components.
This method of analysis is made even more suitable in view

of the fact that it does not confine motivational influence to any single aspect of the pentad, but it is designed to
account for ratios within the five terms.
Aristotle's definitions of epideictic and deliberative

oratory are also fundamental to this study in that each will
be used to classify the oratory of King and Cleaver.
Another
reason for the inclusion of these classificatory terms is that

epideictic oratory appears to move people to accept an attitude while deliberative oratory moves people to action.
This paper will begin its investigation into the
rhetoric of Eldridge Cleaver and Dr. King by defining epideictic and deliberative oratory according to Aristotle.
Once this has been accomplished, this writer will define the
method of dramatism as it has been explained by Kenneth Burke.

The second step of this paper will include an analysis
of the scene in which Mr. Cleaver and Dr. King participated.
Following this, the author of this paper will apply the

definitions of epideictic and deliberative oratory to the
speeches of King and Cleaver.
The results of this investiga-
tion will provide the basis for the analysis of the purpose
of each speaker.
The concluding phase of this study will be a comparison

of the appeal to act (deliberative oratory) and the appeal
to attitude (epideictic oratory) as expressed by Dr. King and
Mr. Cleaver.
From this analysis, certain inferences will be
drawn regarding the dramatic ratios within the oratory of
each speaker and their respective purposes.
CHAPTER II
DRAMATIC RATIOS WITHIN EPIDEICTIC AND
DELIBERATIVE ORATORY
Defining the discipline of rhetoric has occupied the
minds of rhetoricians for a period exceeding two milleniuras.
Cicero, in the dialogue De Oratore, stated that rhetoric was
"speech designed to persuade."
Aristotle, in the Rhetoric
stated that rhetoric "may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion."
Isocrates saw rhetoric as the "craftsman of persuasion."
Definitions of rhetoric stressing persuasion persisted up to

the time of Quintilian. In Institutio Oratoria , Quintilian
defined rhetoric as the "science of speaking well."
Twentieth Century scholar, Kenneth Burke, defines rhetoric

as "the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing
o
cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols."
Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (New York: World Publishing Company, 1950), p. 57T.
York:
The
Aristotle, Rhetoric , trans. W. Rhys Roberts (New The Modern Library, 1954), p. 24.
Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives
g
,
p. p. p.
574.
574.
574.
The influence of language can hardly be exaggerated.
Don
Mart in dale in his book, Institutions , Organizations and Mass
Society
states that "the most fundamental of all agencies of
influence is communication; the most basic of all instruments

of social control is language.
Martindale and Burke do not
appear to be assigning a more prominent role to rhetoric than
Aristotle did in the Fourth Century, B.C.

Extant Aristotelian works offer innumerable references
to analytic methods available to modern critics of rhetoric.
Included in the works of Aristotle is the Rhetoric in which

can be found a tripartite classification of the kinds of
orations
Rhetoric falls into three divisions, determined by the three classes of listeners to speeches. For of the three elements in speech-making --speaker, subject and person addressed--it is the last one, the hearer, that determines the speech's end and object. The hearer must be either a judge, with a decision to make about things past or future, or an observer. A member of the assembly decides about future events, a juryman about past events: while those who merely decide on the orator's skill are observers. From this it follows that there are three divisions of oratory (1) political, ,q (2) forensic, and (3) the ceremonial oratory of display."
The first of these classifications, political oratory,
also known as deliberative, hortatory and advisory, is con-
cerned with something that shall or shall not be done in the

future.
9
The speaker engaged in deliberative oratory is
Don Martindale, Institutions Organizations and Mass Society (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966), p. 293.
,
10
Aristotle, Rhetoric , pp. 31-32.
primarily concerned with persuading someone to do something

because it will prove to be either good (good in itself and
therefore worthy of being pursued for its own sake) or
advantageous (good for a person and therefore worthy of being
pursued for what it can do for us or what we can do with it).
Whether one relies on the topic as a good or as an advantage

will depend on the nature of the subject and the nature of
the audience.
When a speaker is attempting to persuade a
listener to study art he will probably do so by demonstrating

that it is a good in itself.
This would be the case as those
who study art generally do not find that it makes them richer
or necessarily even more popular, but that it helps them
appreciate art works in general.

matter.
This is, then, a qualitative
An orator attempting to persuade an audience that they

should study medicine would probably demonstrate the advantages of such a course of instruction.
In this demonstration
the orator would probably inform his audience of the high
income of medical doctors
the number of lives saved each
year in the United States by physicians and surgeons or the

job security that is attached to this profession.
The values
connected with the advantageous would be of a quantitative

matter.
Edward P. J. Corbett, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965),
pp.
i33"=T5T:
The nature of the audience is also a determining factor in selecting an appeal through either the goodness or the
advantage of an object.
The speaker should have an under-
standing of the temper, educational level, interests and

mores of his audience in order to adapt an appropriate per-
suasive appeal.
In the book, Classical Rhetoric for the
Modern Student
Edward
P.
J.
Corbett states that if an orator
believes his audience to be more impressed by appeals based
on the goodness or worthiness of a topic "then our knowledge

of the audience will have to be a little fuller and a little
more accurate, because now we must have, in addition to a

general sense of the temper of the audience, some knowledge
of just what things are regarded as 'good
1
by the audience
12
and what the hierarchy of good things is."
Thus, a per-
suasive appeal based on the worthiness or qualitative value

of the subject under discussion should only be attempted by
those who are thoroughly acquainted with attitudes that are

indigenous to the culture of an audience.
In Book I, Chapter 4 of the Rhetoric , Aristotle states
that the orator giving a deliberative speech should be
acquainted with the history of his audience.
With a compre-
hensive view of the culture of an audience, a political

speaker will be more aware of the attitudes of his audience
and what they seek.

12
In a deliberative oration, the subject Corbett, p. 134.
Edward
P.
J.
will be concerned with what the audience should seek or avoid

and the speaker will attempt to persuade his audience on the
basis of their future happiness.
The Aristotelian concept
of happiness is defined as "prosperity combined with virtue;

or as independence of life; or as the secure enjoyment of the
maximum of pleasure; or as a good condition of property and

body, together with the power of guarding one's property and
body and making use of them."
Within the definition of
happiness, Aristotle included such benefits as good birth

(good birth to an individual means that one's parents are free
citizens and that the founders of the line have been notable
for wealth or virtue), wealth (plenty of coined money and
territory and the ownership of numerous estates, slaves and

livestock), and physical health (free from disease and an
attractive, strong body).
The orator, with an historical per-
spective of his audience, will be better equipped to select an appeal to either the worth or the advantage of his topic
and persuade his audience on the basis of what he knows they
consider to be good.
Kenneth Burke also has a definition of happiness which

he refers to as the "Pleasure Principle of Orientation."
Burke believes that people "characterize the signs of experience mainly with reference to pleasant and unpleasant
Aristotle, Rhetoric , p. 38.
10
expectancies."
These expectancies involve the services
that are performed by people who possess such virtues as
industriousness, ability, frankness, kindness, helpfulness,

generosity, cheerfulness and forgiveness.
"We should love to have
us.
.
.
Burke states that

. .
these virtues
.all about
Thus, we try to cultivate them in ourselves as
well."
15
However, even if a man is not virtuous but the
society in which he lives manifests virtues, one would still

live in a world which could be quite comfortable.
Hence,
Burke's concept of happiness differs from that of Aristotle

in that Burkeian happiness revolves around the serviceability
of the virtue and Aristotelian happiness is concerned with

the prestige that comes from having the virtue.
In summary, the deliberative oration is designed to
persuade someone to select or reject a particular proposition.

The fact that the audience has the option of acting on a
proposition by way of selecting or rejecting it suggests that

they are free to do so.
In A Rhetoric of Motives
,
Kenneth
Burke states that persuasion "involves choice, will; it is
directed to a man only insofar as he is free."
16
"Only inso-
far as men are potentially free, must the spellbinder seek
to persuade them.
Insofar as they must do something, rhetoric
Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1954), p. 21.
Burke, Permanence and Change , p. 22.
Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives
p.
574.
11
is unnecessary,
its work being done by the nature of things,
though often these necessities are not of a natural origin,

but come from necessities imposed by man-made conditions."
This persuasive appeal to out-and-out action would be con-
trasted with the persuasive appeal to attitude.
If the choice
of actions is restricted, Burke believes that "rhetoric seeks
rather to have a formative effect upon attitude."
18
It is
the point of action and attitude that seems to constitute one of the differences between deliberative and ceremonial
oratory.
Ceremonial oratory, or, as it is sometimes referred

to, epideictic oratory,
is concerned
principally with the
present.
The primary function of this type of rhetoric is
either to praise or censure somebody or something.
Aristotle
states in Book I, Chapter 3 of the Rhetoric that those "who
praise or attack a man aim at proving him worthy of honor or

the reverse, and they too treat all other considerations with
reference to this one.
nl9
Edward
P.
J.
Corbett states that
the ceremonial orator seems to be more "intent on impressing

the audience with the eloquence of his laudatory efforts than
he (is) on persuading his audience to adopt a certain course
of action."
20
A second reference is made to action by

p.

18
19
574.

Aristotle, Rhetoric
,
p.
574.
p.
33.
20
Edward P. J. Corbett, p. 139.
12
Corbett when he states that ceremonial oratory "differs from
deliberative discourse in that its primary object is to praise

or censure someone, not to persuade men to do or not to do
something."
21
These references to action or lack of action
refer to what Kenneth Burke terms "persuasion to attitude" and "persuasion to action."
Another fundamental difference between deliberative

and ceremonial oratory is the central aim of each type of
discourse.
It has been stated that deliberative oratory has
the special aspect of happiness and the special aspect of
ceremonial discourse is praise or blame.
Quite naturally,
each of these types of oratory relies on different special

topics to support the central aim of happiness or praise and
blame
The special topics of ceremonial discourse would be
the virtue or vice or the noble or base aspects of the thing
being praised or blamed.
In selecting criteria for discussing
the nobleness or baseness of something, Aristotle stated in
Book I, Chapter
of the Rhetoric that the "Noble is that
which is both desirable for its own sake and also worthy of
praise; or that which is both good and also pleasant because
good.
If this is the true definition of the Noble, it fol-
lows that virtue must be noble, since it is both a good thing
and also praiseworthy."

21
22
Virtue, believes Aristotle, is "a
Edward
P.
J.
Corbett, p. 139.
Aristotle, Rhetoric , pp. 56-57.
13
faculty of providing and preserving good things; or a faculty

of conferring many great benefits and benefits of all kinds on all occasions."
Aristotle gives eight examples of what
people commonly discuss when they are attempting to affect

the attitude of someone toward something.
1.
They are:
Justice this would refer to the individual who respected the rights of other men.
Courage--this virtue refers to those qualities of an individual that allow him to face dangerous or trying situations without fear, but with firmness.
Temperance- -with this virtue men choose to obey the public laws rather than their own physical pleasure drives.
2.
3.
4.
Magnificence- -this refers to the generosity displayed by an individual in matters involving money
Magnanimity- -this refers to the act of doing good to others on a larger scale than they would expect.
5.
6.
Liberality this refers to the act of expending money, time or effort on the behalf of others.
Gentleness --this virtue refers to the kindness that we extend to others.
7.
8.
Prudence this virtue allows men to make wise decisions concerning methods to achieve happiness. 24
This list of virtues represents those qualities in the
character of an individual that people of all ages and environments would consider to be of beneficence to the whole
society.
23 It would follow, then, that to attack the character

24
14
of a man would be to note the absence of these qualities and thus persuade your audience to adopt an attitude that would
condemn him for his personal qualities.

Aristotle described another means by which men may
praise or censure in oratory.
When attempting to persuade
someone of the worthiness or advantage of a certain thing,
men have a tendency to magnify the virtues and minimize the

vices of the object being discussed.
In attempting to per-
suade the audience of the ignobility of something, the orator
should magnify the vices and minimize the virtues.
Aristotle
terms these concepts "amplification" (referring to magnifying)
and "depreciation" (referring to minifying)

In summary, it can be stated that the deliberative
oration is aimed at moving men to commit an act.
The orator,
through the special aspect of happiness, attempts to persuade
men that the action called for in his discourse will contribute to their future well-being.
The principal point to
be made here is that this type of oratory requires action on

the part of the audience.
Ceremonial discourse, on the other hand, is not aimed

so much at action as it is concerned with persuading the
audience to adopt an attitude similar to that of the orator.

Burke states that persuasion to attitude is intended to
"induce or communicate states of mind."
This would require
nothing more of the audience than their acceptance of the

25,
Aristotle, Rhetoric
p.
62.
15
proposition being offered.
That is, they would not be expected
to act on the proposition of the orator, but merely include

it within their "states of mind." It was previously noted that the methods of amplifi-
cation and depreciation were effective means of persuading

an audience to accept a point of view held by an orator.
Further mention of this should be made in connection with
contemporary methods used to inject attitudes into the minds

of an audience.
In the Rhetoric
Aristotle stated that an orator
delivering a ceremonial discourse should concentrate on associating the object of his praise or blame with what is ele-
vated or base.
If one is attempting to praise a man, Aris.
totle stated that he "may pit him against others.
The
comparison should be made with famous men; that will strengthen

your case; it is a noble thing to surpass men who are themselves great."
27
Another form of amplification stated by
Aristotle is to take the actions of a man and "invest these with dignity and nobility." 28 A third form of heightening
the effect of praise would be to associate the actions of a
man with what is considered by the audience to be noble or

virtuous.
9 ft
Yet, "even if a man has not actually done a given

p.
574.
27
28
16
good thing, we shall bestow praise on him, if we are sure that

he is the sort of man who would do it.
29
Another method of
If
persuasion would be that of the ethical appeal or ethos.
the speaker is held in esteem by those in his audience, they
tend to believe his statements concerning the nobleness or

ignobleness of the topic he is discussing.
It has thus far been established that deliberative ora-
tory seeks primarily to motivate people to commit an out-andout action while ceremonial discourse is more concerned with
motivating an audience to accept a point of view expressed

by a speaker.
The methods employed to reach these ends have
been discussed; it remains to discuss those matters which
motivate an audience to react in a manner which was sought by

the speaker.
A method for such an analysis has been developed

An
by a contemporary scholar and rhetorician, Kenneth Burke.
explanation of this analysis and its relation to deliberative
and ceremonial oratory will conclude this chapter.
In this age of intense human interaction, much verbiage

is aired concerning actions and reactions to these actions in
terms of motives.
Theorists such as Marx and Freud have
erected elaborate theories of motives but their works neglect

to state the relationship between motives and the forms in
which they are expressed.

29
Hugh Dalziel Duncan, in his
17
introduction to Permanence and Change by Kenneth Burke, states

that "Burke argues that symbolic systems in art, religion,
science, philosophy, literature, and indeed, in all phases
of action are answers to questions posed by the situation in
which they arose."
30
It is to the development of an under-
standing of motives as they exist in communication that
Kenneth Burke devotes much of his writing.

The heart of Burke's argument is simple enough, namely, that symbolic forms affect conduct because of the ways in which they affect communication, and thus all action. He is saying that motives lie not only in some kind of experience beyond symbols, but also in symbols. In sum, symbolism is a motive because symbolism is a motivational dimension in its own right. The way in which sex is symbolized largely determines the kinds of emotions we have about sex. This does not mean that somatic sexual 'feelings' cannot be studied as we study any kind of somatic experience. But a feeling is not an emotion until the feeling is expressed in some form that 'attaches' values to the somatic feeling. The proper study of emotions, therefore, is the study of the forms of their expression in social life. 31
1
That is, the way in which we relate ourselves determines, in

part, the way in which we relate to society.
"The study of
forms--the ways in which we communicate
becomes
then the
study of motives, just as the study of contents --what we com-
municate about
does
also.
The symbolic or formal phase of

If
the act is, therefore, no less real than its motor phase.
we are to understand one, we must understand the other. 32

30
31
Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change
p.
XXII
Kenneth h
Burke, Permanence and Change , pp. XX-XXI
32,
"Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change , p. XXII
18
In Counter - Statement , Burke explains that "though

forms need not be prior to experience, they are certainly
prior to a work of art exemplifying them."
33
These symbols
either orient a situation or provide adjustment to a situation,

or do both.
Thus, Burke places man as a communicant beside
the whole man:

tific.
the political, economic, religious and scien-
If man matures within the framework of a mathematical
orientation, he is inclined to perceive arithmetic relationships left unobserved by the layman to this scientific field.
Or,
if his religion happens to be non-Catholic, man does not
interpret life after death in terms of purgatory.

It should follow, then, that communication is a social
phenomenon in that its communicative effects are based in

"social likeness."
Burke states that no matter how much an
individual poet "may transform language for his special purposes, the resources with which he begins are 'traditional,
that is:
1
social.
And such sociality of meaning is grounded

"Ideal
in a sociality of material conduct, or cooperation."
cooperation," states Burke, "would be a momentous material
aid to the communicative medium, whereas communication is

impaired to the extent that cooperation is impaired."
35
Duncan stresses in his introduction to Permanence and Change
Kenneth Burke, Counter Statement (Los Altos, Calif.: Hermes Publications, 1953), p. 141.
35
,
33
p. p.
LI I. LIII.
19
that if "we can develop a method for the analysis of what
symbols do to us in our relationships with each other, we may

yet learn to lead a better life."
36
The development of a
"method for the analysis of what symbols do to us in our relations with each other" would bring us closer to what Burke
refers to as "ideal cooperation."

One of the primary means of analyzing a human inter-
action employed by Burke is called "dramatism."
This model
of action is designed to analyze what communication is doing

for people as they act together.
The dramatic act, also

act,
referred to as the pentad, is comprised of five terms:

scene, agent, agency and purpose.
The pentad that Kenneth Burke constructs in his Grammar

of Motives offers men a "synoptic way to talk about their
talk about."
37
The pentad that Burke offers is an answer to
his criticisms of the symbolic analysts who fail to clarify the way in which they arrive at their conclusions about the
meaning of symbols.
Burke stresses his belief that "the
principle of form typified in drama is the basic form of all

relationships among men in society."
38
This model of communi-
cation is intended to tell us what communication is doing for
people as they interact.

36 37
The concern of the dramatic model

XLIII.
p.
Kenneth Burke, Grammar of Motives (New York: World Publishing Co. 19$0), p. 33".
,
The
38
p.
XXX.
20
is "with the basic forms of thought which,
in accordance with
the nature of the world as all men necessarily experience it,
are exemplified in the attributing of motives."
39
Burke
states that these forms of thought can be found in legal
judgements, poetry, fiction, political and scientific works
and in bits of gossip offered at random.

The five terms of the dramatic model are act (what was
done)
,
scene (where or when it was done)
agent (who did it)
agency (the instrument or means used) and purpose (why it was

done).
The discussion of the pentad will begin with the
ratios of the five terms as they have been developed by Kenneth
Burke
Keeping aligned with the dramatic model, it can be said

that the scene is the setting or background against which the
act was committed.
Also, the scene is the container of the
agent committing the act.
Burke states that it is a principle
of drama that the "nature of the acts and agents should be
consistent with the nature of the scene.
And whereas comic
and grotesque works may deliberately set these elements at

odds with one another, audiences make allowance for such
liberty."
The nature of this scene may be conveyed by the
linguistic element (dialogue) and the non-linguistic element

39, Kenneth
Burke, A Grammar of Motives , p.

,
X,
40,
Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives

p.
X.
3.
p.
21
(stage property).
These properties that construct the scene
provide men with motives for action just as environmental

conditions are, according to Darwin, instrumental in deter-
mining the behavior and development of man.
"From the motiva-
tional point of view, there is implicit in the quality of the

scene, the quality of the action that is to take place within
it.
That is, the act, in almost anything other than
comedy, will be consistent with the whole of which it is a

part.
"Thus, when the curtain rises to disclose a given
stage-set, this stage-set contains, simultaneously, implicitly,

all that the narrative is to draw out as a sequence, explicitly.
Or,
if you will, the stage-set contains the action
ambiguously (as regards the norms of action)
and
in the
course of the play's development this ambiguity is converted

into a corresponding articulacy.
The properties would be:

This, is
scene is to act as implicit is to explicit."
referred to by Burke as the scene-act ratio.

The scene-agent ratio, as explained in A Grammar of
Motives , defines the relation between the person and the place.
According to Burke there is a synecdochic relation between the

scene and the agent.
There is the same relationship between
scene and agent as there is between antecedent and consequence:

the contents of the container will, by the logic of
the scene-agent ratio, determine the quality of the thing
Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives , p.

43
7.
7.
p.
22
contained.
The implication of this is that the agent within
the scene can modify it in such a way as to implicitly con-
tain the quality of his action.

In A Grammar of Motives one can find terms that are
synonymous with the term scene as used by Burke:

environment, and situation.
society,
More specific terms for scene
are also introduced: romanticism.
12:20 P.M., Elizabethan period, or
These terms for scene can have, depending on
the definition and intent of the author, a motivational bearing.
The political terms that are used to describe a situa-
tion have a motivational impact as those living under a particular form of government are expected to adhere to or act
in accordance with governmental regulations.
Here the reader
will notice that the scene-act ratio can be applied in two

ways,
"it can be applied deterministic ally in statements that
a certain policy had to be adopted in a certain situation, or

it may be applied in hortatory statements to the effect that
a certain policy should be adopted in conformity with the
situation."
From this it can be concluded that a purely
democratic act cannot exist unless the scene is purely

democratic.
Burke further reduces the motivational bases of scene
when he states that our words for "position," "occupation,"

and "office" indicate scenic overtones in action.
"Our words
for particular 'jobs' under capitalistic industrialism refer
Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives , p. 13.
23
to acts, but often the element of action is reduced to a mini-
45 mum and the element of sheer motion raised to a maximum.
Within the present state of technology can be viewed scenes

where an act corresponds to the timing of an assembly line.
From this information, it could be stated that the

ratios of the scene and the act and the scene and the agent are positive.
Both the act and the agent are said to be conThese two ratios constitute but two of
tained by the scene.
the possible ten ratios that are recognizable under the pentad
as developed by Dr. Burke.
In Chapter 31 of the book Communi -
cation and Social Order , Hugh Dalziel Duncan discusses the
remaining eight ratios within the dramatistic model of communication.
Paraphrased for use in this paper, these are:
The scene-agency ratio refers to the appeal to do something because it has been established by custom, usage or tradition. An example of such a ratio would occur when a teacher would say to a child, "Children your age do not act like that."
The scene-purpose ratio would be made-up of actions that have their purpose grounded in the environment. Duncan states that 'money determines the 'laws of supply and demand,' so it is 'natural' for men to work for money. "46 This act of working has been stimulated by the scene in which the actor participates.
Evidences of congruency are to be found in the actpurpose ratio. That is, the end of action, or its purpose, and the action itself are said to be congruent. If a soldier states that people must go to war in order to purify the race, evidences of the act-purpose ratio would exist. Here the act (warring) and the purpose (purify the race) are congruent.
45 46
p.
14.
(New York:
Hugh Dalziel Duncan, Communication and Social Order The Bedminster Press, 1962), p. 533".
24
In the act-agency ratio, means are made into ends. That is, the agency is made-up of the act itself. If one thought that hard work brought happiness, then the means (hard work) would be made into the ends (happiness).
The agent -purpose ratio can best be seen when the act of a leader becomes the purpose of the community. An example of this would have taken place when Charles de Gaulle stated that "I am France." That is, the actions of President de Gaulle became the purpose of France.
The agent -agency ratio occurs when relationships are motivated by qualities intrinsic to the character of an agent. That is, in instances when agencies such as instincts, drives, or states of mind motivate relationships, the agent-agency ratio is dominant. This ratio would be seen when the "herd instinct" of an animal motivates it to be gregarious.
The agency-purpose ratio occurs when instruments or techniques become ends. Duncan states that how we record temperature is our concept of temperature. The agency-purpose ratio would thus include the concept that experiences are limited by the number of forms or symbols that people have to describe them.
The last of these ratios to be discussed is the actagent ratio.

In the discussion dealing with the ratios of
the scene-act and scene agent, it was noted that the act and
the agent are inherent to the scene as the scene is said to
contain them.
Burke points out that the relation between act

"The agent does not 'contain'
and agent is not positional.
the act, though its results might be said to 'preexist
virtually' within him.
And the act does not
'
synecdochically
share' in the agent, though certain ways of acting may be
said to induce corresponding moods or traits of character." 4

Burke suggests that the act-agent ratio more strongly suggests a "temporal or sequential" relationship than a purely
p.
16.
25
"positional or geometric" one.
That is, the agent is responsi-
ble for the act and the scene is tertiary to the issue.
Ordinarily, the scene-act and the scene-agent ratios cover

cases involving motives, but there are instances where further
discriminations are necessary as in the case when motives are
essentially located in the agent.
Such a case would occur
when a man defends his country on the basis of a patriotic

attachment to the soil and in lieu of the political instrument that governs him.
This invites circular reasoning to
occur within the analysis of motives,
"if an agent acts in

,
keeping with his nature as an agent (act-agent ratio)
he may
change the nature of the scene accordingly (scene-act ratio)
and thereby establish a state of unity between himself and

his world (scene-agent ratio)
.
Or the scene may call for a
certain kind of act
which makes for a corresponding kind of

Or our act may change
48
agent, thereby likening agent to scene.
us and our scene, producing a mutual conformity."
Such
purity of action is not possible, believes Burke, as people

are capable of but "partial acts" that represent only a por-
tion of the complete character of the actor.
From this it
would naturally follow that one must limit his field of observation (the total act) and find what fundamentals contribute
to or motivate the act under analysis.
This can be done,
believes Burke, through an analysis of "substance."
Burke states that to describe a thing in terms of what

48
p.
19.
26
it is
(substance), is to state what a thing is not.
Although
the word is used to designate the intrinsic facets of a thing,
the word etymologically refers to its extrinsic facets as

well.
By defining a thing, one marks its boundaries through
terms that possess, implicitly at least, contextual reference.
Contextual definition, then, is the first method of definition
discussed by Burke.
Familial definition is the second form
of definition to be considered.
Familial definition defines a substance in terms of

its ancestral cause.
The Platonic Doctrine of Forms which
states that each thing in the world had an eponym in heaven

is an example of familial definition.
To Plato, the worldly
object was an imperfect replica of its heavenly form but
nevertheless was generated by it.
From this one can see that a definition by context would stress placement while an ancestral definition stresses
derivation. In any sustained discussion of motives, states
Burke, the two "become interwoven, as with theologies which
treat God both as 'causal ancestor' of mankind and as the
ultimate ground or context of mankind."
These treat sub-
stance as a unit without consideration of its component parts.

The third form of definition, definition by location, allows
one to discuss the object or act of his attention in terms
of "substrates" or building blocks that comprise the whole.

49
p.
28.
27
Definition by location is discussed in terms of the

circumference of the area within which an act or object is
viewed.
That is, a human action viewed in a scene that in-
cludes human interaction will be attributed different motives
when the scene is narrowed to exclude all people but the principal agent.
Because of this, Burke states that "we are
properly admonished to be on the look-out for these terministic relationships between the circumference and the
fered,
' '
circum-
even on occasions that may on the surface seem to be

In the same light, one
of a purely empirical nature."
should view man, not as an historically isolated creature,

but, as a product of a situation extending through centuries.
To Burke, man is in an historical, generically human and uni-
versal situation.
The choice of a circumference used in
analyzing the motivational effects placed upon an agent repre*

sents what Burke refers to as a "substantially free" selection.
51
In confronting the wide range of circumferences that
orbit the act, "men confront what is distinctively the human
freedom and the human necessity.
This necessity is a freedom
insofar as the choice of circumference leads to an adequate
interpretation of motives; and it is enslavement insofar as

the interpretation is inadequate.
One might exploit the
conveniences of 'substance' by saying that, in necessarily
p.
78. 84.
p.
28
confronting such a range of choices, men are 'substantially'

free." 52
"The contracting and expanding of scene is rooted in

the very nature of linguistic placement.
And a selection of
circumference from among this range is in itself an act, and

'act of faith,
1
with the definition or interpretation of the

CO
act taking shape accordingly."
That is, an expanded scene
would alter a previous scene-act ratio and thus would call

for a slightly different to a radically different interpre-
tation of the act under analysis.
To totally interpret our
environment as a stimulus to action one must expand the

orbit of the circumference to include all that has taken
place since the Edenic age.

laborious a task to require.
This, of course, is far too
The point to be made is that
the motives attributed to the actions of a man can be drastic-
ally altered when viewed in varying scopes.
The sentence
"Barney acted like any normal three year old," leads one to consider Barney "normal."
That is, until the scene or cir-
cumference is widened to include his physical age of

twenty- seven.
This discussion should allow the reader to arrive at
an understanding of what Burke means by the terra "definition."

The next step will be to survey the term "dialectic
52
Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives
p.
p.
84. 84.
53
29
substance" and state how this will be employed in the grammar.

It has been previously observed that a "thing"
(substance) is defined in terms of its boundaries.

it is defined in relation to what is external to it:
That is,
its
context.
Dialectic substance must be considered not only as
a "merely external instrument, but also intrinsic to men as
agents.
Its motivational properties characterize both 'the
human situation' and what men are 'in themselves.'"
Burke
states that dialectic substance is the "over-all category of
dramatism, which treats of human motives in the terms of verbal

action.
By this statement we most decidedly do not mean that
human motives are confined to the realm of verbal action.
We mean rather that the dramatic analysis of motives has its

point of departure in the subject of verbal action (in
thought, speech and document)."
Hugh Dalziel Duncan in
Communication and Social Order explains that the dramatic

model of Burke is grounded in symbols themselves.
Burke,
according to Duncan, "does not tell us simply what symbols

do in communication, but how they do what he says they do."
56
Duncan continues by stating that "if we regard man as a

symbol -using animal we must stress symbolism as a motive in
any discussion of social behavior.
That is, the kind of

33. 33.
Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives

56
p.
p.
p.
Hugh Dalziel Duncan, Communication and Social Order,
114.
"
30
symbols we have, who can use them, when, where, how, and
why--these do not 'reflect
motives, they are motives."
With this in mind, the discussion will return to dialectic

substance in order to better understand what Burke means when
he states that it is the "over-all category of dramatism.
Dialectic considers things in terms not of some other,

but of the other.
else.
A thing is defined in terms of something
In the present investigation, it was stated that people
talk about human motives dialectically (dramatistically) when

they do so in terms of verbal action.
When Burke states that
dialectic substance is the "over-all category of dramatism,"

he means that the dramatic model is grounded in language
which is a symbolic property.
"Symbolic communication,"
states Burke "is not a merely external instrument, but also
intrinsic to men as agents.
Its motivational properties char-
acterize both 'the human situation' and what men are 'in themselves.'"
58
Thus, when a man sees human motives in terms
of verbal action his language will reflect both the "human
situation" and what he is "in himself."

of the dramatic model.
This is the basis
Up to now, this paper has discussed the pentad in the
most generalized terms; how to reduce and expand the scope,

the ratios within the pentad and the definitions of substance
57
pp.
Hugh Dalziel Duncan, Communication and Social Order
114-115.
58
p.
33.
31
and dialectic.
terras
The next step will be to explore the five

scene, agent, act, agency and
of the dramatic model:
purpose.
Scene is the first of the five elements in the structure of a social act to be considered.
This term signifies
the background against which the act is committed.
The cir-
cumference of this is extended to include the time and the

space in which the act occurred. The point that Burke
stresses in his discussion of scene is that the grammatical
area impinges upon the areas of rhetoric and symbolic.
Burke
expresses the opinion that, historically, the terms used to
describe a scene imposed a predetermined supposition.
This
can be seen in the philosophies of various schools of sociology.
Burke states that these schools, in analyzing a given

"Dramatis*
situation, feature one of the terms of the pentad.
tically, the different philosophic schools are to be dis-
tinguished by the fact that each school features a different

one of the five terms in developing a vocabulary designed to
allow this one term full expression (as regards its resources
and its temptations) with the other terms being comparatively
slighted or being placed in the perspective of the featured

term.
,.59
That is, a philosophic school that chose to feature
the area of motives covered by the term "scene" will find
itself "scenifing" the remaining four terms of the pentad
when applying a scenic terminology to them.

59
Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives , p. 127.
"
32
The second term of the pentad to be identified is act.

This describes what took place "in thought or deed," or, as
Aristotle termed it in the Poetics
the "plot."
60
The fact
that Burke stresses the terms "thought" and "deed" is impor-
tant in that he draws a distinction between the terms "action"
and "motion."
If the scene specifically calls for a certain
response, the response would be termed "motion" rather than

action.
When the scene does not mechanically determine the
response, but the actor is free to do as he chooses, the
response will be termed an "action.

The act, then, could be defined as a phenomenon that
originates within an agent and is representative of him.
When
analyzing this phenomenon, one must do so in terms of the

biological interests of the agent and the resistance he finds
in the external world.
The agent, the third terms of the pentad to be discussed, could be defined as the principal actor committing
the act within the scene.
This term can be expanded to in-
clude co-agents (those who help the agent commit the act) and
counter-agents (those who hinder the agent in committing the

action)
.
When attempting to analyze motives of the agent we
must consider the scene within which the act was committed
and the motivational forces within the agent.
For instance,
a man may select to write about views which are considered
Aristotle, Poetics , trans. Ingram Bywater (New York: The Modern Library, 1954), p. 229.
60
33
dissident by the totalitarian government which rules him because he loves freedom (motivation within the agent) or because
nothing is surer to awaken thoughts of freedom than political tyranny (motivation from the scene)
.
In looking for
causistry of the act, one should analyze the motivational

influence exerted on the agent internally and externally.
Agency is the fourth term in the pentad to be discussed.

This term refers to the instruments used by the agent in
committing the act.
Duncan states that agency

61
"...
denotes
means or ways of acting."
From this, one can determine
that an agency, pragmatically, serves as a means to an end.
That is, the agency, when viewed in the context of the act
as the end, serves as a means.
Courts of law are the agency
in the act of justice; language is the agency in the act of
communication; force is the agency in the act of motion.

The purpose, the last of the terms of the pentad to be
discussed, refers to the reason for a particular act or why

it was done; the final cause.
62
Perhaps this could best be
equated with the reward that one would expect to receive after
having committed an act.
The purpose of research is to in-
crease knowledge; the purpose of law is order; the purpose of
naming is identification.
Thus far, this paper has defined the five terms that
Hugh Dalziel Duncan, Communication and Social Order,

p. 434.
62
p.
288.
34
comprise the pentad of Kenneth Burke.
It is important to note,
however, that these terms "seldom stand alone in symbolic
phases of the act.
Relationships between two, or stress on
various combinations of two or more elements, are common."

This will be found to be the case as all of these terms par-
ticipate in a common ground (motives) and this makes for

" trans formability."
"At every point where the field covered
by any of these terms overlaps upon the field covered by any

other, there is an alchemic opportunity, whereby we can put
one philosophy or doctrine of motivation into the alembic,
make the appropriate passes and take out another."
64
These
transformations, Burke states, take place in areas of am-
biguity within our statements about motives.
It is the pur-
pose of these transformations to distinguish the relationships between the five terms of the pentad.
The following
example from Burke indicates how transformations take place
within act, agent, agency, scene, and purpose.

War may be treated as an agency, insofar as it is a means to an end; as a collective act, subdivisible into many individual acts; as a purpose, in schemes proclaiming a cult of war. For the man inducted into the army, war is a scene, a situation that motivates the nature of his training; and in mythologies war is an agent, or perhaps better a super-agent, in the figure of the war god. 65
These terms in the pentad, states Burke, should not be Hugh Dalziel Duncan, Communication and Social Order
p. 434.

p. p.
XXII.
294.
35
called the necessary "forms of experience," but the necessary

"forms of talk about experience."
Burke indicates the com-
pleteness of these terms in analyzing motivational influence
when he states that
"...
all statements that assign motives
can be shown to arise out of them (the five terms of the
pentad
scene,
67
act, actor, agency, and purpose) and to termin-
ate in them."
Thus far, this paper has established the fact that the
scene, to a degree, determines the quality of the act that
will take place in it.
Also, the act that is committed will

This provides evidence that
be representative of the agent.
the act is determined by two elements of the pentad acting in
concert:
the scene and the agent.
On the other hand, it was
also noted that an actor, through the quality of his act, can
change the quality of the scene.
To determine the influence
of each of the terms of the pentad on the act, a scholar
would find it necessary to view the scene and the elements

that were circumferential to it.
Once the circumference of
a scene has been described, an analysis of its contents could
be made much more complete than before such an analysis as

the scholar would be aware of scenic influences on the remain-
ing four terms of the pentad (actor, agent, agency and purpose).
Since no human situation is isolated from the past,

66

p.
317.
p.
XVIII.

36
a description of the circumference of the scene will neces-
sarily include an historical development.
Such an analysis
will take place in the remaining sections of this thesis.

The purpose of this study will be to determine whether
the type of oratory employed by Eldridge Cleaver and Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., may be subject to critical analysis
within the standards of the pentad developed by Kenneth Burke.

Studies based on Kenneth Burke's dramatis tic forms
have been fundamental to the development of this paper. such investigations are reviewed below.
Three
In the article "The Rhetorical Structure of the 'New

Left' Movement:
Part I," Leland M. Griffin applies Burke's
dramatic forms to the rhetoric of the "New Left" in the United

States.
The author states that the "New American Right" was
developed out of opposition to the "Old Left" and it became
reasonable to anticipate that a "New Left" would appear.

this analysis, the author interprets "rhetoric" to include
In
both the persuasive utterances and the out-and-out actions of

the "New Left."
According to Griffin, the scene within which
the "New Left" and all other political movements operate is the Cold War.
The founders of the "New Left," believes the author,
aimed their oratory primarily at the intellectuals rather

than the workers as they saw the intellectual community as
the most potent agent of change.
The key terms in the vocabu-
lary of this political movement cluster into two groups
37
"devil terms" (such as competition, alienation, conformity,
absurdity, loneliness, passivity, fear, bondage, hate, anxiety,

the welfare state, Holocaust) and "god terms" (such as
cooperation, identification, commitment, sanity, community,

action, hope, freedom, love, peace, transcendence.)
Griffin states in this article that the "New Left" movement is concerned with how sane, human people should act
in the political scene that surrounds them.
The author sug-
gests that the Burkeian scene-act ratio would be one method
of analyzing political acts committed by the "New Leftists" in the United States (non-rational, non- democratic acts in a
non-rational, non- democratic scene).
The "New Left," utiliz-
ing the channels of mass communication, has suggested that
people transcend the Cold War scene through nonconformity,

dissociation, and civil disobedience.
This method, suggests
the author, does not permit the "New Left" to enter public
life as the prevailing current of the broad national rhetoric

is a rhetoric of non-extremism.
That is, the actions of the
"New Left" are not representative of the national scene and
therefore the scene-act ratio is in imbalance.

The Appendix to Permanence and Change entitled "On
Human Behavior Considered
'
Dramatis tically'" considers how

In this
social drama brings order in human relationships.
study, Burke states that the four basic motives arising in
human communication are guilt, redemption, hierarchy, and

victimage.
Within the social drama there exists "social
38
mysteries" that determine order and rank within a culture.

People, through differences of sex, age, education, wealth,
skill, and other conditions of life, become remote and strange
to each other and it is this estrangement that Burke defines
as "social mystery."
All actors in the social scene use
such mysteries:
the military grants privileges according to
rank; members of an organization receive respect according

to their respective status within the group.
Burke states
that the proper educational approach to the mysteries would

be the recognition and acceptance of them as inevitable in
the formation of social order.
The author indicates that the
present philosophy of the mysteries is one that leads people

to vacillate between mystification and the unmasking of the
mysteries.
Acceptance of the mysteries would lead to a proper
order in human relationships.
Another article which employed the Burkeian pentad is

entitled "The Image of the Negro in American Films" by
William
L.
Burke.
In this article, the author states that
culturally persistent and highly public forms and actions

create and sustain attitudes in a society.
Thus, the attitudes
developed by people reflect definitions that have been found

in the cultural scene within which they live.
Movies form
a part of the background against which people act and are
therefore significant in attitudinal development.
The crea-
tion of an image of the American Negro in the entertainment
industry has been influential in forming the attitudes of
39
white Americans toward black people.
The author of this
article states that the creation of an image of the American
Negro in popular and fine arts has been the job of white men.
The image that he created of the Negro in the American
theatre cast him in the role of comedian, musician, or dancer,

In silent films the Negro was portrayed as a Rastus or Sambo type character.
The point to be made here is that the images
that the white man came to accept of the Negro were largely
those he experienced in entertainment.

In his analysis of "The Image of the Negro in American
Films," William Burke employs the dramatistic pentad which

has been developed by Kenneth Burke.
With this method of
analysis, the study sought to classify Negro characters from
thirty-eight films into the following categories:

1.
Ecstatic
creative,
musical, and spontaneous.
2.
Savage giant physical proportions, happily engaged in manual employment, athletics, or welfare.
3.
Background bystander.
4.
nature, bound up with religious symbolism and action, altruistic behavior.
the "invisible man" as Christian "spiritual-integrative"

motivated
menial or
5.
Economic
by monetary goals.
The purpose of this study, states William Burke, was

to analyze the manner in which films perpetuate and develop
culturally acceptable ways of "naming" the Negro.
While
these films may perpetuate the image of the Negro, the author
believes that the image of the American Negro is becoming
40
somewhat more Christian.

The point made by the author in this article is that
the image of the Negro has changed over the period of time
in which these thirty-eight films were made.
The earlier
films displayed the Negro in the image of Background and
Savage, while later films incorporated Ecstacy and Christianity,
That is, the role of the Negro, especially the Negro male,
has changed from one of athlete to jazz musician to one of
wise group leader, physician, and self-sacrificing friend.

Also, earlier films portrayed the rebellious behavior of the
Negro but this has been overcome and more recent films present the "god- like goodness" of the American Negro.
This
projection of the Negro would then form a portion of the

scenic background against which actors in American culture
operate.
CHAPTER III
THE TIMES OF KING AND CLEAVER
PART I
There exists evidence today which supports the idea

that mankind first came into existence on the continent of
Africa.
Archaeologists, in defining man, state that Homo
sapiens are "tool-using animals" and the oldest tools in the
world have been found in the region of Uganda.
The exact
color of the skin of these people is not known, but it has
been established that a Negroid type of man was predominant

among a race that developed in the Sudan around 5000 B.C.
68
In the following centuries, powerful nations began to develop

on the continent of Africa and by the middle of the fifteenth century, European trading vessels were a familiar sight along
the west coast of the Dark Continent.
From 1472 to the middle of the nineteenth century, under the guns, the diseases, and the exploitive greed of Europeans and Americans the various African cultures declined, decayed, and finally disappeared. When literate Europeans and Americans missionaries, explorers, historians, and archaeologists --finally arrived on the African scene, they could find little to connect the semibarbarous African tribes they encountered with the magnificent ruins of forgotten cities over which they
,
Robert Golds ton, The Negro Revolution (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1968) , p 4
.
68

42
sometimes stumbled. Surely these ruins and the culture they bespoke must have been the work of other, nonAfrican peoples who have come, built, and vanished in It was hard to believe they could the mists of time. have been produced by the direct ancestors of the tribes they knew. And so the legend of "Darkest Africa" --born in the troubled consciences of traders, conquerors, and slavers who would in any event have been indifferent to the cultures they were destroying gained a psyudo-scientific respectability which it has only recently lost. There never was a "Darkest Africa" there was only a darkness in the minds of " those who came to enslave and exploit a continent. 6
For nearly four hundred years, slave traders took
nearly fifteen million people from Africa and sailed them to

the continents of Europe and North America where they were
sold at auction.
"But the horrors of the auction block or
'scramble' were as nothing compared to the rigors to which
the slaves were exposed after their purchase.
Then came the

1
period of three or four months known as 'seasoning.
During
that time the slaves were broken to labor discipline and
trained to work in the fields and mines.
...
It has been
estimated that as many as five percent of the slaves captured

in Africa died on their march to the coastal barracoons and
that a further thirteen percent died during the Middle Passage.
But fully thirty percent died during the process of seasoning."
Thus
,
nearly fifty percent of the Negroes taken from Africa

But those
died before they entered service in the New World.
who survived the trip across the Atlantic and the first few
69
Goldston, p. 21.
Goldston, p. 37.
70
43
months of "seasoning" still faced the problem of a high mortality rate.
The statistics that are available indicate that the
death rate among Negroes has traditionally been much higher

than the death rate among whites in the United States.
Up
to the time of the Civil War, Negro slaves had been cared
for by their owners, but during the period of reconstruction
the status of the Negro changed,
"ignorant, improvident, and
without financial resources, suddenly released from a condition in which they had been cared for by their masters, the
Negroes began to show signs of physical deterioration.
Dur-
ing the scandalous period of reconstruction and the decade
immediately following, the vital statistics of the Negro

went from bad to worse."
Diseases such as tuberculosis,
syphilis, malaria, pellagra and hookworm infested the black
population that was losing every third or fourth child before

the end of the first year of life.
72
Another problem to face the Negro during the reconstruction of the South was that of voting rights.
Following the
Civil War, there appeared to be a unified black vote which
threatened to topple white control in the South.
"Faced thus
with a determined and cohesive black block, white Southerners

fell back on their first line of rapport with black men-S. J. Holmes, The Negro's Struggle for Survival (Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, Inc., 1937), p. 39.
72
Holmes, p. 39.
44
violence.
73
At the Maxwell House in Nashville, Tennessee,
in May, 1867, the Ku Klux Klan was organized and Nathan Bedford
Forrest, a former slave-dealer and Confederate general, was
appointed as grand wizard.

his book, Black Power U.S.A
.
Lerone Bennett, Jr., states in

,
The Human Side of Reconstruction ,
1867-1877 , that terrorists' organizations, under whatever

name, had one fundamental purpose:
"...
the restoration
of white control and white domination of black people.
Since
black power or the possibility of black power stood between
white people and the control of the black population, the Klan
and other terrorist organizations were organized specifically

to destroy black power and create conditions that would make
it possible for white men to exploit black men socially,
politically, and economically."
The main complaint that
the terrorists had against black people was not race, but
property.
There was a feeling among the terrorists that the
government was favoring the poor
black
and white
at
the
expense of the rich and it was for this reason that the Klan
was heavily supported by the rich landowners.
75
Another reason for white domination of the black stated

Lerone Bennett, Jr. , Black Power U.S.A , The Human Side of Rec ons true t i on , 1867-1877 (Chicago: Johnson Publishing C ompany, Inc. , 1967 ) , p. 332.
.
-7 1
73
Lerone Bennett, Jr. , Black Power U.S.A. , The Human Side of Recons true t ion , 1867-1877 (Chicago*: Johnson Publishing C ompany, Inc. , 1967 ) , p. 332.
^Bennett Black Power U.S.A struction , 1867-1877 p. 333.

,
,
7S
The Human Side of Recon-
45
by Bennett in his book was that the whites wanted to control
black labor.
Through such control, "Negroes might be made
to toe the mark again, to do the bidding of the employer, to
come up to time a little more promptly, and do more work than they would otherwise do.
It also soon became apparent that
in this way the Negroes could be deterred from voting, as

they naturally would."
76
Through such reasoning, the Ku Klux Klan continued to

grow and by 1868 Grand Wizard Forrest was claiming that there
were more than a half -million members in the organization.
In 1870 the Klan was disbanded only to be revived again in
1915.
This time the strength of the organization was felt
in both the North and the South.
The heavy demand for labor that resulted from World
War
led to a heavy influx of Southern Negroes into the "By 1920 nearly half a
industrial cities of the North.
million more Negroes were jammed into the rat-infested and

teeming Negro ghettos of the North than had lived there in
1910, and most of them were new arrivals.
They competed for
housing and services with poor white workers, and, after the
war, for jobs.
The wretched conditions under which both black
and white laborers lived in Northern cities, combined with

Bennett, Black Power U.S.A struction 1867-1877 , p. 336.
,
76
The Human Side of Recon The Human Side of Recon -
Bennett, Black Power U.S.A struction , 1867-1877 , p. 339.
46
the tensions of new competition, were at the root of the race
riots." 78
The postwar economic recession further reduced the in-
come potential of many Negroes.
Government purchasing slowed
down and returning soldiers flooded the labor market.
Even
the market for domestic employment that had traditionally
been open to the Negro abated because of increased production of appliances designed to lessen household work.
The reaction of Negro leaders to decreasing employment
security among black people, terrorist organizations such as

the Ku Klux Klan, and a lack of representation in govern-
mental affairs
brought about an organization known as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

or N. A. A. C. P.
This group appears to have been brought to
life by an organization known as the Niagara Movement. In 1905, William E. B. DuBois brought twenty-nine Negro
leaders together and established what became known as the
Niagara Movement.
This group met for five years but found
itself in financial difficulty as most economic support for
Negro advancement at that time went to Booker
T.
Washington.
In 1910 the Niagara Movement disbanded, but from its short life sprang a much more important organization; the
N.
A. A.
C.
P.
79
78
79
Goldston, p. 173.
Goldston, p. 164.
47
In May, 1910, the N. A. A. C. P. was formed and a Boston
attorney, Moorfield Story, was elected Its first president.

The initial membership was small, but its monthly publication,
the Crises which was edited by DuBois
,
had a circulation of
thirty-five thousand by 1914.
80
The aims of the organization
were "To achieve, through peaceful and lawful means, equal

membership rights for all American citizens by eliminating
segregation and discrimination in housing, employment, voting,
schools, the courts, transportation and recreation."
81
Everett
Car 11 Ladd, Jr.

the South
N.
,
in his book, Negro Political Leadership in
states that in the mid-nineteen forties

P.
"...
the
A. A.
C.
had a monopoly of Negro 'radicalism'
radical-
ism meaning little more than keeping the flag of protest flying in the South while the slow assault on discriminations
went on in the courts.
Today, the Association is under
attack for its 'moderate and legalistic' approach to race relations."

82
Mr. Ladd made this statement in 1966 when the
NAACP membership had grown to be in excess of 240,000 and its

income was claimed to be over $1,000,000 a year.
83
Thus, the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

80
Golds ton, p. 164.

The Negro Handbook , compiled by the editors of Ebony Johnson Publishing Company, Inc., 1966), p. 92.
81
(Chicago:
82
Everett Carll Ladd, Jr. , Negro Political Leadership in the South (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, W6o7T pTTo".
83
The Negro Handbook , p. 92.
48
would be considered one of the first large organizations aimed

at attaining the civil rights of the American Negro.
Many
prominent Negro leaders were to become associated with the

N. A. A. C.
P.
,
but few gained the recognition of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15,
1927.
His father, who had been the son of a Georgia share-
cropper, left the plantation and headed for Atlanta.
While
in Atlanta, the elder King completed high school and continued

his education at Morehouse College.
While a college student,
King, Sr.
branched out to the ministry and pastored two small

During this time, King, Sr.
,
Atlanta churches.
met Alberta
Williams, the daughter of A. D. Williams who was the pastor

of Ebenezer Baptist Church.
In 1931, Reverend Williams died

,
and Martin Luther King, Sr.

Baptist Church.
became the pastor of Ebenezer

,
Both Reverends Williams and King, Sr.
were
active in Negro resistance movements
"...
which grew out of
and reflected the violent struggles of slave rebels

,
..." 84
Negro preachers men made in the image of King the elder and his father-in-law, were pivotally successful in molding the leadership tradition of this movement, a tradition that stressed lyrical and somewhat effulgent oratory and a cautious, "realistic" approach to the problems of a racial minority which lacked absolute initiative vis-a-vis their oppressors and had to attack therefore with tact and with caution. The limitations of this tradition, its inarticulation with the great masses of Negroes and its reliance on the good will and
Lerone Bennett, Jr. What Manner of Man Martin Luther (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. 1964)
, ,
,
King , Jr
p.
10.
"
49
generosity of the oppressors, were, in part, a reflection of the Negro situation, a situation defined by powerlessCrucial to an understanding of the leadership ness. heritage Martin Luther King, Jr., inherited- -and expanded is an understanding not of love but of a brute minority status maintained by the fact of power: implacable will of a majority which controlled--and controls--all the lines of force. 85
Because of his church connections and financial interests, Martin Luther King, Sr., was considered to be a member
of the ruling elite of Atlanta's Negro community.
Reverend
King reared his family in a large two-story house surrounded

by some of the largest Negro- owned businesses in the United
States.
Martin Luther King, Jr., along with his older sister,
Christine, and his younger brother, Alfred Daniel, was raised

in comfortable middle-class surroundings,
"it was a secure
world.
King's childhood, unlike the childhood of millions
of other American Negroes, was marked by order, balance, and

restraint:
Sunday School, church, BYPU on Sunday, playtime
in or near the house on weekdays, an afternoon job throwing
papers (not necessarily for money but for discipline and training), early to bed, early to rise.
Days began and ended in
the King home with family prayers
and King and his brother
and sister were required to learn Bible verses for recitation

at evening meals
.
King entered public schools in 1935, later transferred

85
p.
Bennett, What Manner of Man Martin Luther King , Jr.

Bennett, What Manner of Man Martin Luther King , Jr
10.
fifi
.
p.
18.
50
to a private laboratory school at Atlanta University and
finally entered Booker T. Washington High School where he was
considered a model student.
He skipped several grades and
went through high school in two years which allowed him to

enter Morehouse College at the age of fifteen.
While a
student at Morehouse, Dr. King came into contact with Dr.
Benjamin Mays, the president of the college, and Dr. George

Kelsey, professor of philosophy and religion.
Both men were
ministers and through them Dr. King came to realize what
religion meant to the Negro:
it".
provided a safety
Along with
valve against insanity or outright rebellion.
this deepened understanding came the quest for a special
philosophy and eventually the formation of his ideas on social

protest.
King concluded that only in the ministry could he

87
pursue these expanding theories."
Dr. King graduated from Morehouse at the age of nine-
teen and entered Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania.

He was the first Negro to be elected the president of the
student body at Crozer and was the winner of an award which
proclaimed him to be the seminary's most outstanding student

and the recipient of a fellowship to study for a Ph.D. at
Boston University.
While studying at Crozer, King came across the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.
87
Of Gandhi's teachings, Dr. King came
George R. Metcalf, Black Profiles (New York: Hill Book Company, 1968), p. 6.
McGraw-
51
to say that "As I delved deeper into the philosophy of Gandhi,
my skepticism concerning the power of love gradually diminished, and

I
came to see for the first time that the Christian
doctrine of love operating through the Gandhian method of
nonviolence was one of the most potent weapons available to

go
oppressed people in their struggle for freedom."

King's policy of nonviolence gained national and
world prominence during the bus boycott that took place in

Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 and 1956.
Rosa Parks, a Negro
seamstress, boarded a bus in downtown Montgomery, took a seat

in the middle of the bus, and refused to relinquish her seat
to white passengers.
Mrs. Parks arrested.
The bus was stopped and the driver had

She was taken to jail and news of the
incident reached E. D. Nixon, a former president of Alabama's

N. A. A. C.
P.
Nixon heralded Negro leaders throughout the
city and Dr. King joined the group to help free Mrs. Parks.
The leaders decided to approach the situation through a
policy of nonviolence which resulted in a bus boycott by the

Negroes in Montgomery.
The strike lasted twelve and one-half
months and was terminated by a Supreme Court decision which
ordered Montgomery's buses desegregated.

The success with which this boycott met fostered Dr.
King's image as a propagator of nonviolence.
People knew
that King had been jailed twelve times, his home had been
88
Metcalf, pp. 7-8.
52
bombed during the Montgomery bus boycott, and that he had

been stabbed and constantly threatened while continuing to
respond nonviolently.
"Negro clergymen, heartened by King's
success, began to join the front ranks of the civil rights
movement.
In 1956 they founded the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, and elected Martin Luther King its

president.
Soon the new organization had dozens of affili-
ates and scores of workers throughout the South.
And Martin
Luther King became the most popular of the new Negro

leaders.
1 '
89
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (S.C.L.C.)
revolves around two main points:
"...
the use of non-
violent philosophy as a means of creative protest; and secur90 ing the right of the ballot for every citizen."'
Through
such methods
this organization aims at helping the Negro
achieve full citizenship rights, equality and integration

into all aspects of the American life.
"The basic tenets of
Hebraic -Christian tradition coupled with the Gandhian concept

of satyagraha
truth
force
is
at the heart of S.C.L.C. 's
philosophy."
This approach, according to Dr. King, is
designed, not to humiliate the opponent, but to win him over.
*Goldston, pp. 207-208.
Negro Political Thought in the Twentieth Century , ed. Francis L. Broderick and August Meier (Indianapolis": The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1965), p. 269.
91
90
Negro P olitical Thought in the Twentieth Century
p.
269.
53
"The true nonviolent resister presents his physical body as
an instrument to defeat the system.
Through nonviolent mass
direct action, the evil system is creatively dramatized in
order that the conscience of the community may grapple with

the rightness or wrongness of the issue at hand
92
.
.
One
form of this nonviolent, direct action made by S.C.L.C. is

their voter-registration drives which encourage Negroes to
cast ballots for candidates who are sympathetic to their
causes.
In the area of civil disobedience, the S.C.L.C. encour-
ages Negroes to break laws that are binding only on a minor-
ity or laws that
"...
are out of harmony with the moral
law of the universe, or, as the religionist would say, out

of harmony with the Law of God."
93
In breaking "unjust" laws,
the Conference states that this must be done in a peaceful,

open, and nonviolent manner.
But most important, the viola-
tor is expected to accept the penalty for breaking the law.
"This distinguishes S.C.L.C.'s position on civil disobedience
from the 'uncivil disobedience' of the racist opposition in

the South.
In the face of laws they consider unjust, they
seek to defy, evade, and circumvent the law, but they are
92
p.
Negro Political Thought in the Twentieth Century , Negro Political Thought in the Twentieth Century
270.
93
,
p. 271.
54
unwilling to accept the penalty for breaking the law."
Though the Conference encourages breaking unjust laws,

it also recognizes the need for a constructive program within
its philosophy.
Francis L. Broaderick and August Meier note
in their book, Negro Protest and Thought in the Twentieth
Century
that the S.C.L.C. works on two fronts.
"On the one
hand, it resists continuously the system of segregation which

is the basic cause of lagging standards;
on the other hand,
it works constructively to improve the standards themselves.
There must be a balance between attacking the causes and healing the effects of segregation.
n95
The ultimate aim of S.C.L.C. is to foster and create the "beloved community" in America where brotherhood is a reality. It rejects any doctrine of black supremacy for this merely substitutes one kind of tyranny for another. The Conference does not foster moving the Negro from a position of disadvantage to one of advantage for this would thereby subvert justice. S.C.L.C. works for integration. Our ultimate goal is genuine inter group and interpersonal livingintegration. Only through nonviolence can reconciliation and the creation of the beloved community be effected. The international focus on America and her internal problems against the dread prospect of a hot war, demand our seeking this end. 96
Thus, the Conference called upon all Negroes to assert
their human dignity and to refuse to cooperate with laws that
were morally unjust.
The Negro, according to the S.C.L.C,
Negro Political Thought in the Twentieth Century

p.
271.
95
Negro Political Thought in the Twentieth Century
p. 272.
Negro Political Thought in the Twentieth Century , 272-2757 pp.
96
55
had to
".
accept Christian love in full knowledge of its
power to defy evil.
We call upon them to understand that non-
violence is not a symbol of weakness or cowardice, but as

Jesus demonstrated, nonviolent resistance transforms weakness
into strength and breeds courage in the face of danger."
King's efforts did not go unrecognized by those outside

of the black community.
Time
the weekly news magazine,
selected King as the "Man of the Year" in 1963.

stated that King was selected
".
.
.
The magazine
as a man
but
also as
the representative of his people, for whom 1963 was perhaps 98 the most important year in their history."'
Just a year
later, King was given the Nobel Peace Prize by the Swedish
Parliament who stated that King was nominated because he
"...
had succeeded in keeping his followers to the principle

. .
.
of nonviolence.
. . .
Without King's confirmed effectiveness
demonstrations and marches could easily have become

.99
violent and ended with the spilling of blood.
Ultimately,
Reverend King was overcome by the thing he fought hardest

against
violence--and
his life was ended on April 4, 1968 by

,
an assassin.
The death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
was
assessed in various ways, but it was probably the editors of

97
p.
Bennett, What Manner of Man Martin Luther King , Jr
82.
98
p.
Bennett, What Manner of Man Martin Luther King, Jr.

Bennett,
vhat
198.
99
tenner of
Ian
Martin Luther King
Jr.
pp. 198-99.
56
Ramparts magazine that best represented the views of Negro

militants.
In an article from Ramparts entitled "The Execution
of Dr. King," the editors of this magazine stated that King
had been the victim of powerful political and labor union

leaders.
American labor leaders, Hubert Humphrey, congress. .
men, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins, and Lyndon Johnson.

.
. .
collectively had the poifer to implement Dr. King's eloquent and just demands for the Negro, thus making a nonviolent course possible in America's black revolution. But they never even fulfilled their own nominal promises, and wound up opposing King on the grounds that his demands were too extreme or that he wanted them implemented too quickly; thus they forced him onto the streets under the gunsights of the mad, racist whites who, inevitably executed him. It was not just one white man who killed Martin Luther King. The murder was a leadership scurvy with its own political disease; the murderer was White America, gone functionally mad from decades of trying to rationalize its own racial, economic and social depravity. 100
The editors of Ramparts did not believe that King,
unlike many civil rights moderates

contempt.
held the militants in
Rather, Ramparts
'
editors suggested that King
blamed the inaction of many moderates for the aggressive

actions of the militants.
This can be seen in the following
quotation from Dr. King which the editors of Ramparts considered to be his "fundamental mission."
As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men (in the Northern ghettos), I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest
100
p. 47.
"The Execution of Dr. King," Ramparts
May, 1968,
57
compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the government of violence in the world today--my own government. l^l
This article appeared in the May, 1968, issue of
Ramparts and was placed there by the editors of that publication.
Included on the editorial staff of Ramparts at that
time was Eldridge Cleaver, a Negro militant and author.
Cleaver was born in 1935 in Wabbaseka, Arkansas, a small town

near Little Rock.
At the time of Cleaver's birth, his parents
were on the verge of a breakthrough into the southern black

middle class.
His mother, Thelma Cleaver, taught elementary
grades in a school that Eldridge Cleaver referred to as an
"utterly inadequate 'separate but equal' school.
102
Leroy
Cleaver, the father of Eldridge, was a pianist in 1935, but
soon became a dining-car waiter on the Santa Fe Super Chief-"a job that in those days was a stepping-stone to the black
bourgeoisie."
In order to keep his family together, the
elder Cleaver moved the household to Phoenix, Arizona, which

was to be one of the drop-off -points on his railroad route.
101
102
"The Execution of Dr. King," p. 47.
Don A. Schanche, "Burn the Mother Down," The Saturday Evening Post November 16, 1968, p. 65.
,
Schanche , p
65
58
The family remained in Phoenix for almost two years and then
moved to California.
Marital problems forced a separation
between the Cleavers and Thelma Cleaver took Eldridge to Los

Angeles where she became a janitress in the Abraham Lincoln
Junior High School.
It \ms in this junior high school that
Eldridge Cleaver first became involved with law authorities.

The Abraham Lincoln Junior High School drew students
from Rose Hills, an ethnically mixed neighborhood that was
known then as the marijuana capital of California.
During
his years in junior high school, Cleaver was convicted for
burglary and petty theft and served his term in the Fred.
Nelles School for Boys at Whittier, California.
C.
Here he
learned how to sell narcotics and only a few months after his
release from the boys school, he was convicted of a narcotics

charge.
In 1953, Cleaver was sent to the Preston School of
Industry for selling narcotics.
After completing his term
at Preston, he was released, but an arrest for possession of
marijuana ended his freedom.
No longer a juvenile, he was
sent to Soledad prison where he served a two and one-half
year prison sentence.
His release from Soledad was short
lived as he was soon convicted of assault with intent to murder
and sentenced to one to fourteen years.
He served nine years
of this sentence in Folsom state prison before being paroled.
While Cleaver was serving his
terra at
Folsom, he
started to analyze the role of the Negro in American social

structure.
He read widely and attended the prison courses of
59
instruction.
Much of his reading centered around the writings
of Malcom X, who, to Cleaver, was a "spokesman of the
oppressed."
The writings of Malcom X sought to establish
brotherhood between blacks and whites which was in direct

opposition to the writings of Elijah Muhammad. Muhammad's
philosophy included separatism between the black and white

races and the establishment of a separate black community
wherein Negroes would be free economically, politically and

socially.
Cleaver aligned himself with Malcom X as he conthe onus of teaching racial supremacy and hate,
sidered
"...
which is the white man's burden, is pretty hard to bear."
When Malcom X was killed on June 19, 1965, Cleaver
"...
was
even more firmly convinced that Malcom had been going the
nl06 U4_ right way.
.
Throughout his term at Folsom, Cleaver had written

essays and reflections on his personal life and political beliefs.
Late in 1965, he succeeded in getting his writings to
Edward M. Keating who was then the editor and owner of

Ramparts magazine.
Keating was impressed by Cleaver's arti-
cles and sent them to a number of recognized writers and
social critics such as Norman Mailer and Maxwell Geismar.
They responded favorably to the works of Cleaver and plans Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (New York: Publishing Co., Inc., 1968), p. 337
Cleaver, Soul on Ice , p. 57.
Schanche, p. 66.
4
Dell
60
were made to publish his book, Soul on Ice

almost immediately became a best seller.
Cleaver's book
This was the first
event that led the public to notice Eldridge Cleaver.
The
book was published in February of 1968, and the following
March another event took place that eventually led to further

notoriety for the black militant.
Following Keating
!
acceptance of Soul on Ice, Cleaver

P.
came into contact with the Black Panther leader, Huey

Newton.
Cleaver was so impressed with Newton's revolutionary
courage that he decided to join the Panther organization.

The Panthers were a group of militant blacks who patrolled
the streets of ghettos in Oakland, California, armed with
guns and law books to assure Negroes of their rights when
they became the objects of police harassment.
Just two months
after the publication of Soul on Ice , Cleaver was involved

in a gun battle with the Black Panthers and the Oakland Police
Department.
Bobby Hutton, a close Panther associate of

The incident was
Cleaver, was killed in the confrontation.
publicized throughout the United States and, once again,

Eldridge Cleaver was the object of much public attention. Following this incident, Cleaver became the minister of infor-
mation for the Black Panther party for Self Defense and was
soon hired as one of the editors of Ramparts magazine.
these two positions of authority, Cleaver was allowed to
From
publicize his personal philosophy and the principles of the Black Panther organization.
61
Cleaver joined the Black Panthers as the ethics propa-
gated by them seemed to coincide with his personal prejudices.

"Once thought of as not much more than a handful of petty
desperadoes in black spectacles, berets and leather jackets,
more poseurs than effective militants, the Black Panthers have

been thrust into a position of influence among black power
nationalists."
The group became prominent in the San
Francisco Bay area in 1966 and was founded principally by

college dropouts.
They elected to use the panther as their
symbol because the
"...
panther never attacks first.
But
once he is attacked he will respond viciously and wipe out

the aggressor thoroughly, wholly, absolutely, and completely."
108
The group was founded to protect Negroes from unjust police

action, but their efforts were soon expanded to cover a much
wider area.
The Black Panthers have been described as the
one cohesive black militant organization deliberately reaching out to link whites to their cause. Their first white association was with the radical fringe, when they made common electoral cause with the Peace and Freedom Party. But recent events in California have projected their reach beyond this limited alliance to a considerable portion of white students and faculty. The drive for greater representation of blacks in university and college, in which the Panthers are active, has made many more young whites aware of black protest, sympathetic to its goals and involved in battling for them. 109
Evidences of racism, according to Cleaver, are absent
Mary Ellen Leary, "The Uproar Over Cleaver," The New Republic, November 30, 1968, p. 21.
108 T 109
Leary , p
on 21.
Leary, p. 22.
62
from the Panther philosophy.
On the question of integration
and separation, Cleaver states that the "Black Panther party

doesn't advocate either one. We (the Panthers) feel that it 110 The ultimate goal of the Black Panthers, is irrelevant."
believes Cleaver, is to unite the black community in order

that Negro opinions will be heard.
The Panthers want
"...
to see a situation where, in every issue pertaining to social
structure as a whole, that the opinions and will of black
people must be brought into consideration."
Huey
P.
Newton, a Black Panther leader, once explained
the purpose of the Panther party.
According to Newton, the
Panthers are
"...
going to talk about black people arming
themselves in a political fashion to exert organized force in

the political arena to see to it that their desires and needs
are met.
Otherwise there will be a political consequence and
the only culture worth talking about is a revolutionary culture.
(The Panthers)
are going to talk about political

112
power growing out of the barrel of a gun."
Eldridge Cleaver realizes that armed power alone is

insufficient weaponry against the racist system he is seeking
to revolutionize.
110
Even if Cleaver enlists all twenty-two
January
"The Radicals: 7, 1969, p. 35.
Are They Poles Apart," Look
XXXIII,
Ill
ii o
"The Radicals:
Are They Poles Apart," p. 38.

,
Eldridge Cleaver, "A Letter From Jail," Ramparts

June, 1968, p. 20.
63
million Negroes living in the United States, his revolution

has little hope of success against the one hundred and eighty
million remaining Americans.
He must attempt to unify the
blacks and recruit white Americans to join the civil rights
cause as well.
This problem is not unique to Cleaver.

,
Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
also, was confronted with the prob-
lem of unifying and motivating his constituency.
The per-
suasive appeals that each of these men employed in inducing
an audience to act in a concerted effort toward integrating

the Negro into American social structure will constitute
PART II of this chapter.
64
PART II
Scene
analysis
M
of occasion and audience
I Have a Dream"
In June, 1963, in a speech entitled "We Face a Moral
Crisis," President John F. Kennedy reacted to the jailing of
Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., the murder of the

Baltimore mailcarrier, William Moore, and the effort of Governor George Wallace to defy a federal court order requiring the University of Alabama to admit Negro students.
In
this speech, Kennedy stated that "It ought to be possible

for American consumers of any color to receive equal service
in places of public accommodation, such as hotels and
restaurants, and theatres and retail stores without being

forced to resort to demonstrations in the street."
113
Kennedy
emphasized that through segregated schools and inadequate

educations, the Negro suffers a loss which can never be restored.
It was for these reasons that Kennedy asked "the
Congress of the United States to act, to make a committment

it has not fully made in this century to the proposition that
race has no place in American life or law."
In the same
month, President Kennedy sent a comprehensive civil rights
The Struggle for Racial Equality ed. Henry Steele Commager (New York: Harper Torchbooks , 1967 ) p. 164.
, ,
113
The Struggle for Racial Equality , p. 166.
65
bill to Congress.
The March on Washington that took place in
the summer of 1963, was in support of Kennedy's civil rights

bill.
On August 28, 1963, Negro leaders such as Philip

Randolph, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young and Martin Luther King
were joined by two hundred thousand Americans, some sixty

thousand of them white, who converged on the nation's capital
to encourage the passage of the new Civil Rights measure.
The March was sponsored by such groups as the Congress of
Racial Equality, the National Association for the Advancement

of Colored People, the Southern Christian Leadership Council,
the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the Student Non-
violent Coordinating Committee.
"Representatives of labor
unions stood beside college students, housewives marched
alongside veterans' organizations --a mighty and impressive

cross section of America gathered at the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial to hear speeches and to affirm, by its presence, that

the time had come to give meaning to the promise of American
democracy."
Standing now at the peak of his career, a Newsweek
magazine survey published July 29, 1963, revealed that Dr. King received an eighty-eight percent favorable rating from the
Negro masses and a ninety- five percent favorable response from
115
Goldston, pp. 216-17.
66
one hundred leaders reviewed in the sample.
116
The following
month, King addressed the crowds gathered at the March on
Washington with a speech entitled "I Have a Dream."
The
speech is praised by many as the most eloquent oration in

King's career.
117
A New York Times correspondent stated that
this speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial,
"ignited the crowd with words that might have been written
by the sad, brooding man enshrined within the memorial."
118
Lerone Bennett, Jr. Luther King , Jr., p. 157.

117
116
What Manner of Man Martin What Manner of Man ,

,
Lerone Bennett, Jr.
p.
158.
York:
The Civil Rights Reader Walker and Company, 1968)

,
118
p.
ed. Leon Friedman (New 110.
67
"I Have a Dream"
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been It came as a seared in the flames of withering justice. joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic One hundred years fact that the Negro is still not free. later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean One hundred years later, the of material prosperity. Negro is still languished in the corners of American So society and finds himself an exile in his own land. we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to our nation's Capitol to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promisory note This note was in which every American was to fall heir. a promise that all men would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check- -a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real promises of Democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an
68
invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the Nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our Nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "when will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be saitsfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana,
69
go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. changed. I say to you today, ray friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dreara that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are 11 created equal. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, and rough places will be made plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation this must
70
become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain in Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain in Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and mole hill in Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up the day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro thank God spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! almighty, we are free at last!"
71
Act-Purpose
In the first chapter of this thesis it was stated that
rhetoric may be defined as "the use of language as a symbolic

means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond
to symbols."
The following discussion will be an analysis of
the type of cooperation that this author believes Dr. King
hoped to induce in his audience.

The principal message of this speech seems to be King's "dream" for America.
In five separate passages, the author
relates the contents of this dream to his audience and in
each case the message is aimed at an end, rather than the

means which should be employed to achieve that end.
That is,
instead of discussing tactics, this speech seems to be an

obvious effort on the part of Dr. King to imbue his audience
with his goal.
Although the speech may have increased morale
within the civil rights movement, it left King susceptible to

the criticism of events.
The dream of Martin Luther King was
not to become a reality quickly as less than three weeks
after the March on Washington, four Negro girls were killed
and twenty-one people were injured when a bomb was placed in

the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
A second rhetorical aspect of this speech to be discussed concerns King's use of the special aspect "happiness."
This particular oration stresses that the result of non-
violent protest will be the realization of a truly democratic
72
society within the United States where blacks and whites will
live in "a beautiful symphony of brotherhood."
The develop-
ment of the special aspect of happiness seems to be based on
what King believes to be "good" for his audience, rather than

apparent "advantages."
He does not forthrightly discuss what
role the Negro will fill in an egalitarian society or what

benefits the blacks will receive; instead, Dr. King stresses
the scene that will evolve when Americans treat all other
Americans as equals.
Thus, he stresses the qualitative value
of the integrated society.
There appears to be only one category in which this
speech does not fulfill the principles of deliberative oratory.
On the surface it appears that the qualitative appeal
made by King was not an attempt to induce out-and-out action from his audience, but to persuade his listeners to develop an attitude similar to his own.
An appeal such as this,
according to Dr. Kenneth Burke, is indicative of a scene where

the actions of a man are restricted.
However, this does not
appear to be entirely true when the circumference of the scene

is widened to include the fact that King was speaking at an
occasion which was designed to induce action from congressmen

rather than the crowd assembled in front of the Lincoln
Memorial.
This appears to be the case as Robert Goldston
stated in his book, The Negro Revolution , that "it was in

support of
. .
.
(the civil rights bill)
that the great
73
March on Washington took place on August 28, 1963."
119
Thus,
King appears to have been persuading senators and representatives to act while he induced his audience to accept a posi-
tive attitude toward the nonviolent form of protest.
All information seems to indicate that King was speaking to two audiences; those assembled for the March and the
senators and representatives who possessed the political
power to insure passage of the civil rights reform.
The prin-
cipal object of his discourse, however, must have been to persuade congressmen to act (pass the civil rights legislation
that Kennedy had proposed) as that was the goal of the meeting which King was attending.
The congressmen did not have
to be told the steps to take in integrating American society

as King knew that Kennedy's civil rights bill included meas-
ures designed to insure that end.
Also, King did not have
to persuade Congress that there was considerable support be-
hind legislation favoring integration as two hundred thousand

marchers offered evidence of that.
Therefore, King concen-
trated on a discussion of what benefits would be derived from

the passage of the civil rights bill and in this manner he
attempted to persuade political leaders to give the bill their

approval.
That is, his speech was designed to persuade men
to select his proposition and motivate them to act by voting
the bill into law.

119
Thus, the speech "I Have a Dream" appears

214.
"""-^Goldston, p.
74
to fit into the category of deliberative discourse as it
employs the special aspect of happiness, it is designed to
persuade men to select a proposition on the basis of the

"goodness" of the measure, it is directed at the future, and
it solicits action from men in the Congress.
75
Scene--analysis of occasion and audience

"Where Do We Go From Here?"
The second rhetorical appeal of Dr. King to be analyzed,
"Where Do We Go From Here?", is an essay which appears in his

book, Stride Toward Freedom
.
In the text of this book, Dr.
King reiterates the story of Montgomery's bus boycott con-
ducted by the Negroes of that city.
The contents of this
story reveal what took place when fifty thousand Negroes
decided to boycott the public transportation system of Mont-
gomery rather than submit to the discourtesies and humiliation

of segregated busses. In a nonviolent fashion, the Negroes,
led by Martin Luther King, conducted their strike and at the
end of the twelve and one-half month ordeal a federal court

order was released requiring integration of Montgomery's bus
system.
Stride Toward Freedom is a chronicle of the "Negroes
who took to heart the principles of nonviolence, who learned

to fight for their rights with the weapon of love, and who, in the process, acquired a new estimate of their own human
worth."
120
In the final chapter of this book, "Where Do We
Go From Here?", Dr. King structures a solution to the crisis
which has evolved from segregating minority groups in the

United States.
The audience to which Dr. King directed his
remarks is made obvious in the text of this chapter as he
York:
Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom (New Harper and Brothers, 1958), p. 9.
120
76
named the groups to which his appeal was made:
the federal
government, white Northern liberals, moderates of the white

south, the labor movement, the church and its ministers, and
the Negro community.

appeal.
The following is an outline of that
77
"Where Do We Go From Here?"

If America is to respond creatively to the present crisis, many groups and agencies must take an active part in changing the face of this nation. A. There is a need for strong and aggressive leadership from the federal government. If the executive and legislative branches were as 1. concerned about the protection of the citizenship rights of all people as the federal courts have been, the transition from a segregated to an integrated society would be much further along than it is today. 2. Both the Democratic and Republican parties have lagged in establishing a positive committment toward civil rights. 3. Southern states abrogate power when it involves distasteful responsibilities and so, by default, the federal government is obligated to accept these responsibilities. B. Another group with vital role to play in the present crisis is the white Northern liberals. 1. The racial issue that we confront in America is not a sectional but a national problem as injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. 2. There is a pressing need for a liberalism in the North which is truly liberal, a liberalism that firmly believes in integration in its own community as well as in the Deep South. 3. It is one thing to agree that the goal of integration is morally and legally right; it is another thing to commit oneself positively and actively to the ideal of integration. The Northern liberal should not be so bent on 4. seeing all sides that he fails to become dedicated to any side as this will be used as an excuse for indecisiveness A significant role, in this tense period of transition, C. is assigned to the moderates of the white South. Segregation has placed the whole South socially, 1. educationally, and economically behind the rest of the nation.
2.
I.
Many people in the South are quiet because they fear social, political, and economic reprisals if they speak in favor of integration. a. In the name of God, in the interest of human dignity, and for the cause of democracy these millions of people are called upon to gird their courage, to speak out, and to offer the leadership that is needed.
78
D.
E.
The Southern Negro wants to build a freer, happier land with those whites who have not yet joined the civil rights cause. 3. This hour represents a great opportunity for the white moderates, if they will speak the truth, obey the law, and suffer if necessary for what they know is right. Still another agency of effective change today is the labor movement. Trade unions are engaged in a struggle to advance 1. the economic welfare of those American citizens whose wages are their livelihood. 2. The organized labor movement, which has contributed so much to the economic security and wellbeing of millions, must concentrate its powerful forces on bringing economic emancipation to white and Negro by organizing them together in social equality. The church, too, must face its historic obligation in
b.
this crisis. 1. It has always been the responsibility of the church to broaden horizons, challenge the status quo, and break the mores when necessary; thus, the task of conquering segregation is an inescapable must confronting the church today. 2. There are several specific things that the church
can do.
a.
It should try to get to the ideational roots
b.
c.
d.
e.
of racial hate and show that Negroes are not an inferior race, that the idea of a superior or inferior race is a myth, and that Negroes, when given equal opportunities can demonstrate equal achievement. The church can also do a great deal to reveal the true intentions of the Negro--that he is not seeking to dominate the nation, but simply wants the right to live as a first-class citizen, with all the responsibilities that good citizenship entails. The church can also help by mitigating the prevailing and irrational fears concerning intermarriage Another thing that the church can do to make the principle of brotherhood a reality is to keep men's minds and visions centered on God. A further effort that the church can make in attempting to solve the race problem is to take the lead in social reform. (1) The church must remove the yoke of segregation from its own body.
,
79
F.
The church must seek to keep channels of communication open between the Negro and white community. (3) Religious institutions must take an active stand against the injustice that Negroes confront in housing, education, police protection, and in city and state courts. (4) The church must exert its influence in the area of economic justice. Every minister of the gospel has an obligation to 3. become actively involved in the struggle for civil rights. a. In every Southern city there should be interracial ministerial associations in which Negro and white ministers can come together in Christian fellowship and discuss common community problems Ministers can also collectively call for comb. pliance with the law and a cessation of violence. Finally, the Negro himself has a decisive role to play if integration is to become a reality. The Negro must not accept the state of oppression, 1. but take direct action against injustice without waiting for the government to act or a majority to agree with him or a court to rule in his favor. 2. Negroes should not resort to physical violence to gain equality as violent action never leads to permanent peace, but merely creates more complicated problems. 3. The method of nonviolent resistance does not require the oppressor or the oppressed to resort to violence to right a wrong. a. The method of nonviolent resistance will allow the Negro to rise to the noble height of opposing the system while loving the perpetrators of the system. b. Nonviolent resistance makes it possible for the Negro to remain in the South and struggle for his rights. c. Through nonviolent resistance, the Negro can also enlist all men of good will in his struggle for equality. The Negro must convince the white man that he does 4. not seek reprisal for past policies of segregation, but rather he seeks justice for both himself and the white man. The Negro must learn to say to his white oppres5. sors: 'We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force.
(2)
80
We will not hate you, but we cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children; send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities and drag us out on some wayside road, beating us and leaving us half dead, and we will still love you. But we will soon wear you down And in winning our by our capacity to suffer. freedom we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.
1
II.
The Negro should learn the fundamentals of the nonviolent approach and with this philosophy he will change the attitudes of Americans just as Mahatma Gandhi changed the attitudes of the British through a nonviolent approach. A. Nonviolence requires noncooperation with evil and cooperation with the constructive forces of good. Through the cooperative aspects of nonviolence, the B. Negro must get to work on a program with a broad range of positive goals. 1. The Negro must plan to improve his own economic lot through habits of thrift and techniques of wise investment. 2. Negro leaders must arouse their people from their apathetic indifference and actively campaign to register black voters. 3. The constructive program must include vigorous attempts to improve the Negro's personal standards. a. The Negro crime rate is far too high. b. The level of cleanliness among Negroes is far too low. Negroes in the middle class live above their c. means, spend money on nonessentials and frivolities, and fail to give to serious causes, organizations, and educational institutions that so desperately need funds. Through community agencies and religious institu4. tions, Negro leaders must develop a positive program through which Negro youth can become adjusted to urban living and improve their general level of behavior. Since crime often grows out of a sense of futility 5. and despair, Negro parents must be urged to give their children the love, attention, and sense of belonging that a segregated society deprives them of.
81
Dr.
King closed this chapter with a call to action.

This then must be our present program: Nonviolent resistance to all forms of racial injustice, including state and local laws and practices, even when this means going to jail; and imaginative, bold, constructive action to end the demoralization caused by the legacy of slavery and segregation, inferior schools, slums, and second-class citizenship. The nonviolent struggle, if conducted with the dignity and courage already shown by the people of Montgomery and the children of Little Rock, will in itself help end the demoralization; but a new frontal assault on the poverty, disease, and ignorance of a people too long ignored by America's conscience will make victory more certain. On the one In short, \<re must work on two fronts. hand, we must continue to resist the system of segregation which is the basic cause of our lagging standards; on the other hand we must work constructively to improve There must be a rhythmic the standards themselves. alternation between attacking the causes and healing the effects. This is a great hour for the Negro. The challenge is here. To become the instruments of a great idea is a privilege that history gives only occasionally. Arnold Toynbee says in A Study of History that it may be the Negro who will give the new spiritual dynamic to Western civilization that it so desperately needs to survive. I hope this is possible. The spiritual power that the Negro can radiate to this world comes from love, understanding, good will, and nonviolence. It may even be possible for the Negro, through adherence to nonviolence, so to challenge the nations of the world that they will seriously seek an alternative to war and destruction. In a day when Sputniks and Explorers dash through outer space and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, nobody can win a war. Today the choice is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. The Negro may be God's appeal to this age an age drifting rapidly to its doom. The eternal appeal takes the form of a warning: "All who take the sword will perish by the sword."
82
Act-Purpose
The first speech analyzed in this section, "I Have a
Dream," stressed the goal of the nonviolent movement that Dr.

King was conducting in America.
That is, it was organized
to inform the audience of the product which would result from
nonviolent protest conducted with dignity and based on the
principle of love for the opponent.
The second rhetorical
appeal by King to be analyzed, "Where Do We Go From Here?",
emphasized two areas of his philosophy; first, that there are
many groups and agencies that must actively participate in

the civil rights movement; second, the method of creative,
nonviolent protest should be carefully considered.

In this address, Dr. King requested the help of six
groups:
the federal government, white Northern liberals,
moderates of the white South, the labor movement, the church
and its ministers, and the Negro community.
In each case he
assigned areas in which each of these agencies could most
actively and constructively participate in his movement to

integrate American society.
The appeals that Dr. King made
in this selection suggest that he was soliciting direct action
from the organizations that he made reference to in this

chapter.
He called for these agencies to act in the follow-
ing manner:
1.
Federal government Southern states have failed to act on civil rights measures, so by default, the federal government is obligated to accept these responsibilities
83
2.
White Northern liberals--These people must believe in integration for their own community as well as the Deep South and they must commit themselves actively to the ideal of integration.
Moderates of the white South--In the name of God, in the interest of human dignity, and for the cause of democracy these millions of people are called upon to gird their courage, to speak out, and to offer the leadership that is needed.
Labor movement --This organization must concentrate its powerful forces on bringing economic emancipation to white and Negro by organizing them together socially.
3.
4.
5.
Church and ministers--It has always been the responsibility of the church to broaden horizons, challenge the status quo, and break the mores when necessary; thus, the task of conquering segregation is an inescapable must confronting the church today. Ministers can also collectively call for compliance with the law and a cessation of violence.
Negroes --Negroes must not accept the state of oppression, but actively seek to better themselves economically, politically and socially.
6.
Each of these appeals requires action on the part of the

audience; thus, these appeals would fit the category of
Kenneth Burke's "persuasion to action" rather than "persuasion

to attitude."
This is the first indication that Dr. King's
address would be classified as deliberative oratory.
Another area of investigation that is indicative of

the deliberative nature of this address can be found in King's
obvious efforts to persuade his audience to select a proposi-
tion and act on the basis of it.
Cor bet t, in his book,

,
Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student
stated that
epideictic oratory "differs from deliberative discourse in

that its primary object is to praise or censure someone, not
84
to persuade men to do or not to do something."
Thus, delibera-
tive oratory seeks to persuade men to commit an out-and-out

action.
The method by which Dr. King induces his audience
to select his proposition is based on a logical appeal.
Evidence of this comes from his statements which indicate that

the South is behind the rest of the nation educationally,
economically, and socially because of its policy of segregation.
Also, the phrase "injustice anywhere is a threat to
justice everywhere" is spoken in support of King's thesis

that there should be an organized effort to liberate the
Negro.
Thus, the theme of this address would fall into the
category of speeches which are designed to persuade men to

select or reject a proposition rather than the category of
speeches designed to solicit praise or condemnation for

someone.
King elected to support his thesis that integration
would be a beneficent quality through a development of the

"advantage" of the proposition.
Evidence of an appeal through
the "advantage" of selecting King's proposition is to be
found in his argument that integration would include such
quantitative benefits as economic advancement, political

stability, increased social development, less violence in the
streets, and a larger number of productive citizens as Negroes
would have a more responsible role in community affairs in

an integrated society.
The aspect of future happiness also can be found by
85
readers in this appeal by King.
The majority of this address
is directed toward persuading an audience to select and act
on the proposition that integration is desirable.
However,
King's appeal to the Negro is founded on what the blacks of
America can contribute to the nations of the world.
King
completed his address by stating that the "spiritual power

that the Negro can radiate to this world comes from love,
understanding, good will, and nonviolence.
It may even be
possible for the Negro, through adherence to nonviolence, so

to challenge the nations of the world that they will seriously
seek an alternative to war and destruction."
This could be
interpreted as an appeal to future happiness as King was

indicating that adherents to the nonviolent form of protest
can persuade nations to replace destructive means of protest
with more peaceful forms of demonstration.

Evidences of praise and blame were also found in this
discourse by King, but the principal object of these special

topics was to persuade men to do something, rather than
motivate them to praise or censure someone.
Thus, this per-
suasive appeal followed the patterns of "persuasion to action"
stressed by Kenneth Burke and the principles of deliberative

discourse as developed by Aristotle.
86
Scene
analysis
of occasion and audience
"Stanford Speech"
During the fall semester of nineteen sixty-eight,
Eldridge Cleaver was offered a teaching position in an experi-
mental sociology course numbered 139 X and titled Dehumanization and Regeneration of the American Social Order, in the
University of California at Berkeley.
Through the student-
financed Center for Participant Education, Berkeley students
drew up the plans for a course that would allow them to study
ghetto problems.
The students argued that through the close
study of one man who was representative of ghetto dwellers,

they would be given insight into the pressures surrounding
low income groups.
In Eldridge Cleaver students found what
they thought to be an articulate representative of black

Americans.
Cleaver's name was submitted by students to
officials of the University and the Board of Regents promptly
rejected the request.
On October 3, 1968, the Berkeley
Academic Senate decided to oppose the Board of Regents and
voted in favor of Cleaver's appointment by a margin of 668

to 114.
Following the vote by the Academic Senate, the state
legislature voted formal censure of the Cleaver lectures and

several legislators threatened to cut the University's
budget.
Governor Reagan, "himself a regent, denounced Cleaver
87
as a criminal unfit to teach anywhere."
121
Robert Scheer,
the editor of the book Eldridge Cleaver , claimed that Governor
Reagan "hysterically denounced the Cleaver appointment and
maneuvered the Regents, the university's governing board,

into denying academic credit to students taking the course."
122
The president of the University of California at Berkeley,
Charles J. Hitch, warned the University community that "There

is widespread feeling that the University is somehow bent on
its own destruction.
used to think that statements like
this were fatuous, but I find now that over one academic
course, or more accurately, over one man, there has arisen
an issue which could destroy the University as we have known

it.123
The criticism of Cleaver's appointment did not stop
with verbal attacks.
Governor Reagan has tried to revoke the
right of the faculty in California universities to set cur-
riculum and select teachers.
The Governor has also stated
that the University might become subject to special legisla-
tive inquiry in the future.
Max Rafferty, the state Super-
intendent of Education and a member of the Board of Regents

in California, "admonished all California elementary and
121
"Professor on Ice," Newsweek , KXXII, October 21,
1968, p. 92.
Eldridge Cleaver ed. Robert Scheer (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 113.
,
122
123
139
xlIj
National Review , October
3,
1968, p. 1116.
88
high school teachers that they would be dismissed if they let

i
o/
Cleaver into their classrooms." Cleaver responded to the criticisms of his appointment
as a lecturer in an article entitled "An Aside to Ronald
Reagan" which was published in Ramparts magazine.
In this
article, Cleaver stated that all those "bullshit charges that

.
.
Reagan
went through with the Board of Regents,

. .
forcing them to emasculate the course in which
he
was going to participate as a guest lecturer, don't mean

"IOC
shit."
Cleaver further charged that Governor Reagan had
no right to tell the students and faculty members of the
University of California at Berkeley that they would not be

allowed to have him address their classes.
These disagree-
ments that Cleaver had with the Governor of California were

further publicized in a series of lectures given by the
black militant on college campuses throughout California. Included in this series of addresses given by Cleaver was the "Stanford Speech."
Robert Scheer stated that this speech was
The
"typical" of this series of polemical orations.

following is an outline of that speech.
Mary Ellen Leary, "The Uproar Over Cleaver," The New Republic November 30, 1968, p. 23.
,
Eldridge Cleaver, "An Aside to Ronald Reagan," Ramparts , October 26, 1968, p. 22.
126
12 5
Eldridge Cleaver , p. 113.
89
"Stanford Speech"
I.
The basic problem is this country today is political confusion. People don't know who their enemies are; they A. don t know who their friends are. People don't know whether to be afraid of the right B. or the left. People don't know whether they themselves belong on C. the right or on the left, so they just say, Fuck it, throw up both hands , take acid trips freak out on weed pills--alcohol is still with us. D. People feel that they just can't deal with the situation and that's because the people have been consciously manipulated to that end.
,
II.
A.
Blacks recognize that things are getting worse. Racist George Wallace is number two in the polls that they tell us about for President. General Hershey, who sends letters to black boys B. in the ghetto, sending them to Vietnam, is standing up saying that his choice for President is George Wallace. Courts of law are biased against the blacks of C. America as was seen when Huey P. Newton, the Minister of Defense of the Black Panther Party, was railroaded through the courts of Oakland, by Judge Monroe Friedman. 1. Thief Friedman is a Jew who had relatives perish in the Warsaw ghetto. 2 Friedman is aware of how Nazis killed his relatives, yet he sits on his funky ass and presides over the final solution to the Negro problem in Babylon (America) A government run on lies has been traditional in the D. United States. 1. The Democratic party has lifted its standard bearer, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and told him, you're too foul, your lies have caught up with you, you have a credibility gap going. 2. They mean that he's a liar; that he's issued lying reports that you can no longer believe in the statistics and reports put out by his cabinet officers; that in fact, this country has been fed lies throughout its history. 3. People in the black community are tired of lies, tired of the liars, and tired of the gradual and non-solutions.
;
90
E.
F.
Not just Huey P. Newton, not just the members of the Black Panther Party, but black people throughout this country have been turned away from the bootlicking leadership that we've been having for so long. The people are saying, "We've had enough, b. we will no longer take it; white people are threatening us with death, they're threatening us with genocide, so that we see no alternative but to organize ourselves to get into a position to take white people with us if we have to go. If there s going to be a massive death for black people, the best that we can do is get into a position so that there'll be massive death for white people. Black people who inhabit the core of the c. cities as they do are in a position to lay waste to those who will one day come to destroy them. The tyrants are equipped with hydrogen bombs so all blacks can do is go in and take those bombs as they don't have time to develop their own scientists. 1. If bombs are dropped on blacks, blacks will retaliate by dropping bombs on whites. And there can't be no other way about that. No 2. matter what you think about it, see? The Black Panther Party advocates what may be the last alternative to racism before a revolution breaks out in the streets of the United States. 1. The Black Panthers, by themselves, cannot correct the racism that exists in the world today so sane white people and sane black people who recognize the situation that exists must unite with their black brothers and sisters. 2. This unity is needed because divide and conquer is the only sure way that tyrants, despots and racist pigs can insure victory over the people. 3. The Negro knows how this society feels about
a.
them.
a.
b.
This society kidnapped them, brought them here and placed them in slavery. A young black boy was shot in San Francisco by the Tactical Squad. (1) A community review board was called for to review the actions of the police department, but white racists opposed that and said, "We don't like that." This is like saying to the Negroes, "Let the niggers die."
91
4.
There's going to be a review board or the blacks are going to have to review it all in the streets. The Governor of the State of California c. freaked out when he heard that Eldridge Cleaver had been invited to participate in an experimental course at the University of California. Mickey Mouse Reagan ran down to Los Angeles and grabbed the weakkneed Regents by the scruffs of their necks and placed political pressure on them forcing them to say that Eldridge Cleaver could not deliver ten lectures, only one. d. The racist problem is rampant, the problem is a problem of survival, of blood, of your heart beating, of the hearts of people continuing to beat. The Panthers want to see a future where there is freedom, justice and a future where there is no restraint upon people by others who exploit them and grow fat while the exploited grow skinny from a lack of all the things that a good society must have. The Panthers start with the basic principle that every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth deserves the very highest standard of living that human knowledge and technology is capable of providing. Period. No more than that, no less than that.
(2)
III.
America, not Russia, not China, but Babylon, right here in America, is found the country that is the number one obstacle to human progress on the face of the earth
today.
A.
B.
Looking around today, we find ourselves in the pretty position of having to say that America the beautiful, unmasked as America the ugly, America the hideous, America the horrible, the torturer and murderer of mankind, has become successor to Nazi Germany. America was erected on the bones of the red man, and on the graves and sweat of black people; a country erected at the expense of humanity; a country created out of exploitation, avaricious land-grabbing, murder, genocide--called manifest
destiny.
C.
Imperialism exists in the United States. 1. The black community is ruled by racist, exploiting elements who live in the white community: a coalition of white, avaricious businessmen, politicians, who are backed up by the gestapo police departments.
92
D.
E.
F.
Imperialists have turned the black community into a market: not any longer for cheap labor so much, but a market where they take welfare checks, they take the loot that we can steal and rob from the affluent white people in this country, and they suck it back through profits, and leave the Negro to live in the ghetto. Public administrators in this country have become arrogant 1. Reagan and other pigs in the power structure do not own the government. 2. They insult you when you go to talk to them about some need or some service that they're supposed to perform. 3. Public servants are all out of order, from the police to the clerks in the buildings downtown; all of them act as though they own it, when in fact you pay their salary with your taxes, and if anybody belongs to anybody, they belong to the people. 4. They have usurped the machinery of government in this country; they call it representative democracy, but it represents nothing but the pigs of the power structure. Ronald Reagan is capable of no more than read5. ing a grade-B script in a grade-B movie. He is a punk, a sissy, and a coward and a demagogue 6. Hubert Humphrey is a mealy-mouthed vacillating coward. Police departments in this country have developed a caste consciousness. 1. These pigs have all the attributes of motivation that you have in the military service. 2. If a person stands up and demands to be heard, if they say that they want to exercise their Constitutional right and state their position on the war in Vietnam, the police are given orders by plain-clothes pigs who come down and shoot you with mace or kill you. 3. The Oakland Police Department, like all police departments in this country, is rotten from top to bottom and it's got to be put in order by the people. There aren't any more state governments. 1. We have these honorary pigs like Mayor Alioto who preside over the distribution of a lot of federal funds
2.
93
G.
State and local officials are plugged into one gigantic system, one octopus spanning the continent from one end to the other, reaching its tentacles all around the world, in everybody's pocket and around everybody s neck. 3. The oppressed people have to place themselves against the international pig power structure. a. Mao Tse-tung will help free slaves. b. Ho Chi Minn is another force that fights the pigs in power. Government in this country has been a history of government of the pigs, by the pigs and for the American people have been brainwashed and pigs. they continue to brainwash future generations. History has been written by pigs, to edify pigs 1. and to brutalize our minds. 2. All of his ilk, all of the pigs of the power structure, all have to be barbecued or they have to change their way of living.
2.
IV.
Who understands the world today? A. White, simple-minded people, Babylonians, devoid of any ability to reason, don't know what going on
B.
in the world. College students are perhaps the only people left who can deal with this. 1. College students are enraged about this racist society. 2 This is why the Black Panthers are glad when they are invited to go to college campuses to talk to young white people.
V.
A.
The Black Panther philosophy is needed to free the people, The key note of the Black Panther Party's program is for the decentralization of the institutions of this society. 1. Police departments and educational institutions must be decentralized. 2. The Black Panther Party wants college students to help create an educational environment that will help black people cope with racism and with the murderous institutions of this society. a. Students could give lectures. b. Money should come from students to help build buildings in which to house this type of instruction. 3. Colonies of blacks have been set up throughout this country and these must be decentralized before the black man can be liberated.
94
B.
Women can play a very strong part in the black revolution and the Panthers refer to this as pussy power. Women should tell their men that they must work for the revolution or their sugar will
be cut off. Let's pay our respects to Brother Karl Marx's gigantic brain, using the fruits of his wisdom, applying them to the classless society.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
Good white people George Wallace, Law and Order Nixon, Meathead Me -too Humphrey have got to support Eldridge Cleaver or else the niggers are going to come into the white suburbs and turn the white suburbs into shooting galleries. People have got to start telling every Ronald Reagan, every Max Rafferty, every George Wallace, every Richard Nixon, every Hubert Humphrey to go get Fucked. If we can't get them out of office at the ballot 1. box, we must start dragging them out of these offices by their ears. 2. The niggers have been waiting on whites for four hundred years and they're in a position where they can't really wait much longer. There are more people in this country than there are pigs. 1. The pigs can bluff us and they can frighten us, but united they cannot defeat us. 2. We could corral them, we could retire them, and we can run down a program on them that would put them in their place, and we have to start doing that now. Martin Luther King stood up and told things like they were. 1. He did this in a nonviolent manner. 2. The bullet that killed Martin Luther King murdered nonviolence. There can be no response to a racist society but to form a revolutionary movement that can unite the people who have been ruled out.
Eldridge Cleaver closed his "Stanford Speech" with a
commentary on what disciples of the Black Panther philosophy

can expect from a black revolution.
Dealing with ourselves, dealing with the social scientists --the social sciences, excuse me- -we can become human, we can change this barbaric, Babylonian, decadent, racist monstrosity into a civilization, and we can help the world by helping ourselves right here. If we give
95
freedom to ourselves right in Babylon, we will give freedom to the world, and we can then take these guns and have some disarmament, we can have some gun control, and you will be able to walk down your streets at night without worrying about somebody like me or some other crazy nigger or a Mexican or any crazy hippie or a Yippie leaping on you to get some funds or whatever else you have that he might want.
96
Act -Purpose The thesis of the "Stanford Speech" by Eldridge
Cleaver appeared to this writer to be Cleaver's description

of America's attitude toward the Negro and a condemnation of
that attitude.
It is the opinion of the author of this paper
that Cleaver's purpose in this speech was to persuade his
audience to accept an attitude similar to his own toward

racism; thus, his appeal would be considered "persuasion to
attitude."
A further contention of this writer is that the
development of this persuasive appeal was conducted on the

principles of epideictic oratory as they were set forth by
Aristotle.
A defense of this contention will be based on
Cleaver's use of two elements considered integral to deliberative discourse:
censure (supported by appeals to the in-
justice, smallness of spirit, austerity, or the attribution

of ignoble qualities to a thing) and praise (supported by
the appeals to the courage, nobleness, or virtues of a thing)
The first of these special aspects of epideictic oratory,

censure, can clearly be observed in the following passages
from the "Stanford Speech:"

The basic problem in this country today is political confusion.
A government run on lies has been traditional in the United States.

America, not Russia, not China, but Babylon, right here in America, is found the country that is the number one obstacle to human progress on the face of the earth
today.
97
Imperialism exists in the United States.

Government in this country has been a history of government of the pigs, by the pigs and for the pigs.
History has been written by pigs, to edify pigs and to brutalize our minds
Further evidence of censure used by Cleaver in this speech
can be found in the adjectives with which he described various political leaders in the United States.
The following
are examples of this method of censure:
Mickey Mouse Ronald Reagan Reagan is a sissy, a punk, a demagogue and a coward.
Humphrey is a mealy-mouthed vacillating coward. Meathead, Me -too Humphrey.
Mayor Alioto is an honorary pig.
Pigs in power (political leaders).
Cleaver attempted to support these declarations with the

following examples from his speech:
Injustice
Courts as was of the courts
of law are biased against the blacks of America seen when Huey P. Newton, the Minister of Defense Black Panther Party, was railroaded through the of Oakland, by Judge Monroe Friedman.
They mean that he's (President Lyndon Johnson) a liar; that he's issued lying reports; that you can no longer believe in the statistics and reports put out by his cabinet officers; that in fact, this country has been fed lies throughout its history.
People in the black community are tired of lies, tired of the liars, and tired of the gradual and non-solutions
A young black boy was shot in San Francisco by the Tactical Squad. A community review board was called for the review of the police department, but white racists opposed that and said, "We don't like that." This is like saying to the Nagroes "Let the niggers die."
,
98
If a person stands up and demands to be heard, if they say that they want to exercise their Constitutional right and state their position on the war in Vietnam, the police are given orders by plain-clothes pigs who come down and shoot you with mace or kill you.
Smallness of spirit
The black community is ruled by racist, exploiting elements who live in the white community: a coalition of white, avaricious businessmen, politicians, who are backed up by the gestapo police departments.
Imperialists have turned the black community into a market: not any longer for cheap labor so much, but a market where they take welfare checks, they take the loot that we can steal and rob from the affluent white people in this country, and they suck it back through profits, and leave the Negro to live in the ghetto.
Austerity-The people are saying, "We've had enough, we will no longer take it; white people are threatening us with death, they're threatening us with genocide
.
. .
America was erected on the bones of the red man, and on the graves and sweat of black people; a country erected at the expense of humanity; a country created out of exploitation, avaricious land-grabbing, murder, genocide called manifest destiny.
Attribution of ignoble qualities to a thing

Looking around today, we find ourselves in the pretty position of having to say that America the beautiful, unmasked as America the horrible, the torturer and murderer of mankind, has become successor to Nazi Germany.
Public administrators in this country have become arrogant.
They insult you when you go to talk to them about some need or some service that they're supposed to perform.
The United States ... is a barbaric, Babylonian, decadent, racist monstrosity.
. .
.
99
The use of praise can also be found in Cleaver's
attempt to influence the attitude of his audience.
Elements
of this special aspect can be seen in the following quotations
from Cleaver's speech:

There are more people in this country than there are
pigs.
College students are perhaps the only people left who can deal with this (race problem)
Mao Tse-tung will help free slaves.

Ho Chi Minh is another force that fights the pigs in power
To support these statements of praise, Cleaver employed the
following examples
Courage
The pigs can bluff us and they can frighten us, but united they cannot defeat us.
Nobleness -The Panthers want to see a future where there is freedom, justice and a future where there is no restraint upon people by others who exploit them and grow fat while the exploited grow skinny from a lack of all the things that a good society must have. The Panthers start with the basic principle that every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth deserves the very highest standard of living that human knowledge and technology is capable of providing. Period. No more than that, no less than
that.
Virtues --
College students are enraged about this racist society.

In an earlier section of the present chapter, it was
stated that the author of this paper believed that Cleaver's
purpose in the "Stanford Speech" was to persuade the audience

to accept an attitude toward racism that was similar to his
100
own attitude.
Evidence to support this statement comes from
the manner in which Cleaver attempted to motivate his audience.
The only statements in this speech that directly request the
audience to commit an action are:

The Black Panthers, by themselves, cannot correct the racism that exists in the world today so sane white people and sane black people who recognize the situation that exists must unite with their black brothers and sisters. The Black Panther Party wants college students to help create an educational environment that will help black people cope with racism and with the murderous institutions of this society.
If we can't get them (politicians) out of office at the ballot box, we must start dragging them out of these offices by their ears.
The statements which were discussed under the special aspect

of praise and blame are representatives of Kenneth Burke's
method of "persuasion to attitude" which was developed in

the first chapter of this thesis.
Therefore, the majority
of Cleaver's discourse seemed to be an attempt to motivate

the audience to accept an attitude rather than motivate the
listeners to commit an out-and-out action.
Further indication of the epideictic nature of this oration is to be found in the fact that Cleaver's comments
are, for the most part, directly related to present time.
Throughout the text of this speech, Cleaver makes only two

comments which directly relate to future time.
These are:
The Panthers want to see a future where there is freedom, justice and a future where there is no restraint upon people by others who exploit them and grow fat while the exploited grow skinny from a lack of all the things that a good society must have.
101
If we give freedom to ourselves right in Babylon, we will give freedom to the world, and we can then take these guns and have some disarmament, we can have some gun control, and you will be able to walk down your streets at night without worrying about somebody like me or some other crazy nigger or a Mexican or any crazy hippie or a Yippie leaping on you to get some funds or whatever else you have that he might want.
The first chapter of this paper stated that epideictic discourse "is concerned principally with the present" and
Cleaver's oration is found to fulfill this requisite.
Another area of investigation which indicates that the

"Stanford Speech" adhered to the principles of epideictic
oratory comes from Edward
P.
J.
.
Corbett's book, Classical

Corbet t stated that the
Rhetoric for the Modern Student
ceremonial orator seems to be more "intent on impressing the

audience with the eloquence of his laudatory efforts than he
(is)
on persuading his audience to adapt a certain course

127
of action."
Throughout Cleaver's oral and written dis-
course, terms which make direct reference to body functions
can be found.
Cleaver's use of referents to body functions
defies description based on acceptable rhetorical theory
references and for this reason the term "corporal rhetoric"
will be used in this discussion.

The quotation from Corbett cited above indicates that
the form of the laudatory efforts is given prominent attention
in epideictic oratory.
Cleaver's use of corporal rhetoric
has drawn comments from his audiences as well as himself.

127
'Edward P. J. Corbett, p. 139.
102
In the introduction to the book, Eldridge Cleaver
Robert
Scheer stated that "There really was a little old lady in
Orange County who sent Eldridge a note about his language:

'I like
what you're saying, Mr. Cleaver, but your bad words Cleaver himself stated in the "Stanford
hurt my ears!"
Speech" that corporal rhetoric

limit of my vocabulary.
"...
may or may not be the

I don't
I don't know.
go around
counting words.'
129
These quotations indicate that Cleaver
is cognizant of the effect that his rhetoric has on his
listeners.
The fact that he is attempting to influence people
to adopt his attitude toward racism and continues to employ
corporal rhetoric is indicative that he considers his method

of discourse to be affective.
That is, he seems to be more
"intent on impressing the audience with the eloquence of his
laudatory efforts than he (is) on persuading his audience to

adopt a certain course of action."
Thus further supports the
thesis that the "Stanford Speech" would be classified as
epideictic discourse.
From the observations that have been made throughout

this chapter, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that
Cleaver's speech was, according to the Aristotelian definition,

epideictic.
It employed the special aspects of praise and
blame which were given support by appeals to justice and

128
129 ^
Eldridge Cleaver , p. XXXII.
Eldridge Cleaver
p.
114.
103
injustice, smallness of spirit, austerity, courage, nobleness

or ignobleness and virtues.
Also, evidence was given to
support the thesis that Cleaver's comments were, for the most
part, directly related to the present time.
Further evidence
of the epideictic structure of this appeal comes from
Cleaver's concentration on his laudatory efforts, rather than
requesting action from his audience.
Thus, the speech ful-
filled the Burkeian definition of a speech designed to moti-
vate people to accept a certain attitude rather than follow

a certain course of action.
CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION
In the first chapter of this thesis, it was stated that
the dramatic forms developed by Kenneth Burke were designed

to analyze what communication does for people as they inter-
act.
That is, the five members of the pentad (scene, act,
agent, agency, and purpose) comprise a model which is intended to reveal motivational influences within the context of a com-
munication situation.
Each of the members of the pentad, as
they apply to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Eldridge

Cleaver, have been discussed in the text of this paper to re-
veal the motivational influences in the discourse of each

man.
Such a study, believes Burke, should be conducted on
the basis of information that is peripheral or circumferential
to the act of communication under observation.
Thus, in look-
ing for the causistry of an act, one should analyze the moti-
vational influences exerted on the agent.
In viewing a human
action, an investigation of motivational influences must in-
clude the history of the agent under consideration.
That is,
one should not view man as an historically isolated creature,

but as a product of a situation extending through centuries
Cleaver and King have been viewed in this context in the third
chapter of this thesis
"The
Times of King and Cleaver."
105
The historical survey of King and Cleaver that took
place in this paper was conducted, according to Burke's

definition, on the basis of location.
Definition by location
attempts to view an act in terms of the area or scene of which

the act is a part.
The scene of the Negro, as it was devel-
oped in this paper, stressed the social and political history

of the black race in America.
The results of this investiga-
tion indicated that the Negro viewed himself as an actor within a scene in which he was segregated, economically deprived,
and politically impotent.
These factors, then, should be
interpreted as motivating influences on the actions of American blacks
A further area of motivational influence developed by

Burke in A Grammar of Motives concerns a second form of
definition.
Burke believes that the terms a speaker elects
to employ in the description of a scene can have, depending
on the definition and intent of the author, a motivational

bearing.
It was noted in Cleaver's oration that substantial
time was spent condemning political leaders and political
institutions in America. points
Cleaver stressed the following
United States' government
-- traditionally has been run on lies is the number one obstacle to human progress
is imperialistic
has been a history of government of the pigs, by the pigs and for the pigs
106
Courts of law
--
are biased against the blacks of America are pigs
Politicians
--
have become arrogant

are demagogues.
King, unlike Cleaver, directed his listeners toward direct
action and in this manner he stressed future changes in

governmental and private policy regarding integration of the
Negro.
That is, King's definition of the United States'
government emphasized what this institution would be following the success of a nonviolent form of protest.
He accomp-
lished this in the following manner:

I have a
dream
that one day this government will live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be selfevident; that all men are created equal."
that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
The definitions stressed by King indicate that his intent was

to inform his audience of the future scene of happiness which
would result from nonviolent protest, whereas Cleaver's intention seemed to be to impose the present scene of racism
and demagogy upon his listeners.

This information suggests that the five terms which
comprise Kenneth Burke's dramatic forms should be defined in

the following manner:
107
Agent
Scene
King
The circumference of King's life and the background against which his appeals were made.
Cleaver
The circumference of Cleaver's life and the background against which his speech was made,
Act
Persuading
Persuading Epideictic oratory

To motivate the audience to accept a particular attitude.
Agency
Purpose
Deliberative oratory
To motivate the audience to commit an out-and-out action.
However, these five terms do not stand alone in an analysis

of motives.
Burke states that there are relationships between
two of the dramatic forms or that there may be a stress on
various combinations of two or more elements.
The dominant
ratios within the oratory of Cleaver and King seem to be the

scene-act, scene-agent, and the scene-agency combinations.
The scene-act ratio, according to H. D. Duncan, is

found in "all statements which ground social motives in conditions, backgrounds, environments, natural laws, objective
situations, historical necessity, equilibrium, time, the 130 body, etc." This ratio is to be found in the oratory of
both King and Cleaver as each man attempted to justify Negro
protest on the grounds that the blacks in the United States
had been denied political and economic participation in
American society.
King stressed the natural laws and histori-
cal necessity of integrating the Negro into the American

iJU
Hugh Dalziel Duncan, p. 435.
108
social structure through his references to the Emancipation
Proclamation, the Declaration of Independence, and the obligations of the church and its clergy.
Cleaver, however,
grounded social motives in backgrounds and social conditions.

This can be seen in Cleaver's numerous references to the
philosophy of racism and demagogy which he believes has been

traditional in the United States and the harassment which
the Negro receives from law enforcement agencies.
This ful-
fills the requisites of the scene-act ratio as King and
Cleaver appeared to promote Negro actions or attitudes from

the basis that the blacks in America experience a social and
economic status that is inferior to that of white Americans.
The scene-agent ratio is also relevant to a discussion

of King and Cleaver. This ratio requires actors to keep with-
in the conditions of the scene as the participants in a scene

are "prisoners of the situation."
Cleaver and King both
developed arguments in which they discussed the political and

economic inequities faced by the American blacks.
Burke
believes that the implication of this ratio is that the agent
within a scene can modify it in such a way as to implicitly

contain the quality of his action.
This would lead one to
believe that King and Cleaver, through a description of
racism in America, hoped to persuade Negroes that the scene

should be changed.
131,
That is, motivational influences were
"Hugh Dalziel Duncan, p. 435.
109
imposed by King and Cleaver in the form of a description of

a scene stressing racial inequality.
The scene-agency ratio can also be applied to the
oratory of King and Cleaver.
This ratio is the result of a
situation in which ways of doing something are considered necessary conditions of social action.
King stressed the
agency of nonviolent protest as this would allow protesters

to love the perpetrators of the system under attack.
However,
Cleaver stressed militant protest as nonviolent protest had

been proved ineffective by the bullet that killed Martin
Luther King.
Under the influences of the scene-agency ratio,
each man asserted that his philosophy contained the plan
which would lead to the integration of the Negro into American

society.
Further use of the dramatic forms should be used in

an analysis of the types of oratory employed by Dr. King and
Eldridge Cleaver.
In the course of this thesis, it has been
stated that the goal of both deliberative and epideictic oratory is persuasion.
Deliberative discourse seeks to persuade
an audience to take action on a particular proposition while

epideictic oratory attempts to persuade an audience to adopt an attitude held by the speaker.
of Motives
,
Kenneth Burke, in A Grammar
states that "insofar as a choice of action is
restricted, rhetoric seeks
...
to have a formative effect
upon attitude.
This is good to remember, in these days
of dictatorship and near dictatorship.
Only insofar as men
110
are potentially free, must the spellbinder seek to persuade

them.
Insofar as they must do something, rhetoric is unneces-
sary, its work being done by the nature of things, though
often these necessities are not of a natural origin, but

come from necessities imposed by man-made conditions."
132
Thus, epideictic oratory, which is persuasion to attitude
rather than persuasion to out-and-out action, is typically

found in a situation where the scene-act ratio necessitates
a particular action.
The author of this paper suggests that
Cleaver's reliance on the method of censure was an attempt

to have the work of rhetoric (persuasion) done by the nature
of man-made conditions.
That is, Cleaver's primary purpose
is censuring American society was to motivate his audience to
accept his condemnatory attitude.
In this manner, Cleaver
imposed what he believed to be the nature of present conditions

on his audience and through this appeal, he attempted to per-
suade his listeners to an attitude.
King, however, concen-
trated less on the conditions of the Negroes in his discourse than did Cleaver.
The principal message in the oratory of
In
Dr. King seemed to be the goal of his nonviolent protest.
this manner he did not impose man-made conditions, but rather
he sought action from his audience to create a more egali-
tarian scene.
132
p.
574.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author is grateful to Dr. William
L.
Burke, his
research director, for his kind friendship and helpful

assistance throughout the course of this investigation.
The author is particularly grateful to Dr. Norma D.
Bunton for her guidance and critical reading of this thesis.

Thanks is also due Dr. Herta Jogland for her pertinent
comments concerning the sociological references contained

in the text of this paper.
112
LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED

Aristotle.
Poetics trans. Ingram Bywater. World Publishing Co., 1950.
,
New York: New York:
The
Aristotle. Rhetoric , trans. W. Rhys Roberts. The World Publishing Co., 1950.
Bennett, Lerone, Jr.
Black Power U.S.A Reconstruction , 1867-1377T Chicago: Co., Inc., 1967."

.
The Human Side of Johnson Publishing Jr

Chicago:
What Manner of Man Martin Luther King Johnson Publishing Co. Inc., 1966.
. ,
Burke, Kenneth. Counter Statement Hermes Publications, 1953.
Los Altos, Calif.:
A Grammar of Motives ITshing Co. , 19537

.
New York:
The World Pub-
Permanence and Change Merrill Co., 1954
Indianapolis:
The Bobbs-
A Rhetoric of Motives iTshing Co., 1950.

,
New York:
The World Pub-
The Civil Rights Reader ed. Leon Friedman. Walker and Co., 1968.
New York:
"An Aside to Ronald Reagan," Ramparts Cleaver, Eldridge. (October 26, 1968), 22.
.
"A Letter From Jail," Ramparts (June 1968), 18-21.
Soul On Ice
1968.
New York:
Dell Publishing Co.
Inc.
Corbett, Edward P. J. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student New York: Oxford University Press, 1965.
.
Duncan, Hugh Dalziel. Communication and Social Order The Bedminster Press, 1962. York:
New
Eldridge Cleaver , ed. Robert Scheer. House, 1967.
New York:
Random
113
"The Execution of Dr. King."
Ramparts (May 1968), 47.

.
The Negro Revolution Golds ton, Robert. Macmillan Co., TM8.

"
New York:
The
Port The Negro's Struggle for Survival Holmes, S. J. Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, Inc., 1937.
.
Stride Toward Freedom King, Martin Luther Jr. Harper and Brothers 1958.
,
New York:
Negro Political Leadership in the Ladd, Everett Carll, Jr. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, South.
Leary, Mary Ellen. "The Uproar Over Cleaver," The New Republic (November 30, 1968), 21-24.
Martindale, Don. Institutions, Organiza t ions and Mass Society New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. ,"T9'657~
.
Metcalf, George R. Black Profiles 1968. Book Co.

,
.
New York:
McGraw-Hill
Compiled by the editors of Ebony The Negro Handbook Chicago! Johnson Publishing Co., Inc., 1966.
Negro Political Thought in the Twentieth Century , ed. Francis L. Broderick and August Meier. Indianapolis The BobbsMerrill Co., 1965.
:
"139 X."
National Review (November 30, 1968), 1116-1118.
"Professor on Ice."
"The Radicals: 1969), 35.
Newsweek
LXIII (October 21, 1968), 92.
Are They Poles Apart."
Look , XXXIII (Jan.
7,
Schanche, Don A. "Burn the Mother Down," The Saturday Evening Post , LXXXIV (November 16, 196F5T 65-81.
The Struggle for Racial Equality , ed. Henry Steele Commager. New York: Harper Torchbooks , 1967.
A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE TYPES OF PUBLIC APPEALS MADE BY DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. AND ELDRIDGE CLEAVER
by
CHARLES
S.
MILES
B.A., Fort Hays Kansas State College, 1964
AN ABSTRACT OF A MASTER'S THESIS
submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree
MASTER OF ARTS
Department of Speech
KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY Manhattan, Kansas
1969
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Eldridge Cleaver are
considered to be two Negro leaders that have had significant

influence on the integration techniques employed by black
Americans.
This study was concerned with the rhetorical
appeals used by King and Cleaver to popularize their individ-
ual policies of racial reform.

The purpose of this thesis was to study the rhetorical
appeals of King and Cleaver within the framework of the
Aristotelian definition of epideictic and deliberative oratory and to apply the results of this investigation to Dr.
Kenneth Burke's pentad.
This was done in an attempt to define
the types of rhetoric employed by Cleaver and King, the pur-
pose of each speaker, and scenic influences in the discourse

of each man.
To fulfill this purpose, a background study of the
Aristotelian definition of epideictic and deliberative discourse was presented in order to establish a method of analysis for the study of the speeches by King and Cleaver.
The
definition of each of these types of oratory was based on information contained in Aristotle's Rhetoric and Edward
Corbett's Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student
.
P.
J.
Further
background study was conducted in Kenneth Burke's book, A

Rhetoric of Motives , to define the pentad.
The concepts of
epideictic and deliberative oratory were then applied to two

speeches by King and one speech by Cleaver to determine the
dramatic ratios within the oratory of each speaker.
The results of the study indicated that Cleaver relied,

for the most part, on an epideictic development in his oral
address while King's speeches were deliberative in nature.

This fact, when analyzed within the framework of Kenneth
Burke's dramatic forms, indicated that the purpose of King's
persuasion was to motivate his audience to commit an action
while Cleaver was more intent on persuading his audience to

accept an attitude similar to his own.

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Fort Hays Kansas State College, 1964

submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree

KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY Manhattan, Kansas

over the population of this world, it does not seem improper

what way do leaders persuade, cajole, or force people to act

Perhaps part of the answer to these

questions lies within the realm of rhetoric.

discipline has been defined as persuasion traditionally, but

suasion "involves choice, will; it is directed to a man only

Only if man is free to act will

persuasion influence him.

must do something, "rhetoric is unnecessary, its work being

stricted, Burke believes that rhetoric is not persuasive, but

Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives

That is, the purpose of rhetoric in a restrictive atmosphere

In his book, A Grammar of Motives , Kenneth Burke

develops a dramatis tic pentad that is designed to analyze

In the preceding paragraph it was noted that "insofar

as (man) is free" (scene), rhetoric is persuasive (purpose).

However, if "the actions of a man are restricted" (scene),

rhetoric "seeks rather to have a formative effect upon attitude" (purpose).

altered by the scene of which it was a part (scene-purpose

In the more restrictive scene, rhetoric seems to

adhere to the principles of epideictic oratory ("praised or

to adhere to the principles of deliberative oratory ("urges

Aristotle in Book I, Chapter

scene persuades men to commit an out-and-out action, whereas

in the initial scene persuasion is directed towards attitude.

men since the foundation of communal living.

has driven men to accept (attitude) a system of political con-

trol or to fight (act) to perserve it.

Such formidable and Eldridge Cleaver

have sought to persuade men to overcome discriminational

oratory (deliberative or epideictic) employed by each of these

men seems to have been the result of the scene-act or the

The reasons for basing

men are contemporaries, (2) both of them are engaged in

philosophies of each man are exceedingly different, and (4)

much of their effectiveness as leaders can be attributed to

The literature of Kenneth Burke is basic to this study

This method of analysis is made even more suitable in view

account for ratios within the five terms.

Aristotle's definitions of epideictic and deliberative

reason for the inclusion of these classificatory terms is that

This paper will begin its investigation into the

method of dramatism as it has been explained by Kenneth Burke.

Following this, the author of this paper will apply the

The results of this investiga-

The concluding phase of this study will be a comparison

From this analysis, certain inferences will be

drawn regarding the dramatic ratios within the oratory of

each speaker and their respective purposes.

"speech designed to persuade."

Aristotle, in the Rhetoric

Isocrates saw rhetoric as the "craftsman of persuasion."