Action vs. Inaction
Persuasion many times is the art of convincing the audience to do something, an action. However sometimes persuasion can take the part of convincing an audience to inaction. One such example is in the 1968 Robert Kennedy speech in Indianapolis following the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Robert Kennedy was running for president and was scheduled to make a campaign speech to supporters in an African-American neighborhood in Indianapolis. Kennedy had campaigned on civil rights and knew the assassination would enrage many of his supporters who Reverend King was a hero. Kennedy could either cancel his speech or allow for these supporters to vent their frustrations in various ways, many violent, or he could speak out against this assassination, but call for those angry to not take violent action, and instead morn the loss. A wrong decision could be detrimental to Kennedy's presidential hopes if handled incorrectly. He could measure the audience wrong or say the wrong thing and turn his supporters against him. They might think him to be weak or even sympathetic to those who were against the civil rights movement. Kennedy, in his mind, had to do something, and decided to speak.
Today many feel that this speech, by a prominent politician, in a time of crisis, unified the nation in mourning, and convinced many who would have used this event as a reason to turn protest into violence, to act peacefully. Kennedy spoke for just under two minutes and in that time convinced the audience to not resort to violence. Though this was not the case country wide, with people in many parts of the country expressing their grief and frustration with violence.
Kennedy was able to use his ethos, and pathos to change the crowd's anger to one of mourning. He was able to unite the crowd's emotions. This event in history could have been handled much differently, and could have had disastrous outcomes. Kennedy's speech made a huge affect on the civil rights movement and an immediate affect, which stopped some of the violence nationwide.
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