Abstract
The rhetorical positions of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X are usually juxtaposed as polar opposites. However, their most famous speeches, I Have a Dream and The Ballot or the Bullet, are more meaningful read as a unified dialectic rather than as single orations. Their shared purpose through divergent means ultimately cooperated to benefit the Civil Rights Movement. The rhetors' personas are compared and contrasted, as is their interaction in the Civil Rights Movement. The essay then decodes the speeches within frames of Afrocentric rhetorical practices of signifyin' and call-response exchanges that camouflaged subversive meanings while forging stronger communal links.
Journal Title
Iowa Journal of Communication
Volume
42
Issue
2
First Page
119
Last Page
150
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Reynard, Leslie J.
(2010)
"Creative Tension: The Call/Response Dialectic of Martin and Malcolm,"
Iowa Journal of Communication: Vol. 42:
No.
2, Article 4.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ijc/vol42/iss2/4
Copyright
©2010 Iowa Communication Association
