Traits of Three Great Leaders

POWERFUL LEADERS

Martin Luther King's purpose in his Letter From Birmingham City Jail was to influence others to support the black's civil rights movement. These letters were a response to a statement made by eight white clergymen. The statement was that social injustices existed but argued that the battle against racial segregation should be fought solely in the courts, not in the street. In 1954 there was a Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in public schools. King was writing this to influence others (moderate whites) to support the black's civil rights movement. King was addressing the accusations that the civil rights movement as "extreme". King wanted to have the whites to try to imagine how it feels to be in their shoes. For example, answering the question your child asks you "Daddy, why do white people treat color people so mean?" Who knows where we would be today if King did not push for the act to be enforced. Perhaps if he had listened to the eight clergymen, we might still be faced with the same issues back then to this day.

The audience King was trying to reach was the moderate whites, who weren't sure how to feel about the issue. King was trying to make the people feel his pain by giving example of imaging telling their own child that they are not able to go to the new amusement park Fun Town because it is closed to colored children. Perhaps if King would have had the approach of saying in a negative way "If all you white people would stop being idiots and see that we are all the same." then King's message would not have been the same. What he means by "justice too long delayed is justice denied" is if things are not done in a timely matter it's just as if they are not getting done.

The tone King took was the best. It was formal with a little irony. From the first paragraph of King's letter, he states that he really didn't have time to answer all of the criticisms that come across his secretary's desk, even though King did not have a secretary because of being in prison. King wanted to show that he was taking the time to listen and answer them with hope he will be patient and reasonable terms. King was being sarcastic by saying the clergymen were genuine good will and their criticisms were sincerely set forth. King was effective in his works because he stated a clear goal and how to accomplish it and to never vary from it not matter what.

Abraham Lincoln's purpose in his speech "The Gettysburg Address" was to reunite the nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. He was careful of what he said to not make the issue worse than it already was because the wording may have made it detrimental. Lincoln memorialized the sacrifices of those who gave their lives at Gettysburg and wanted to ensure the survival of America's representative democracy, the "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Lincoln's audience was the nation as the North and the South. He was recognizing the dead as well by saying "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain". He was not taking sides in which saying that the issue has not been resolved and we are not united again. We both lost a lot of people here and a lot of blood has been shed. Perhaps if he would have celebrated the so called victory of the North then the nation might not have ever been reunited.

The tone was ceremonial and very formal. This