Andrew Young and MLK commemorative ceremony

The reception held in commemoration of Martin Luther King was put together very nicely and contained aspects that I did not expect. I enjoyed the the Speech given by the High school winner of the oration contest and the gospel choirs.

As for Andrew Young, I felt that they choose an appropriate person to give this speech. He had known and personally worked with Martin Luther in his efforts to gain equal rights for everyone. Although Young's speech did jump around a bit and seemed slightly disorganized, I still felt that it was moving and that he made some very profound points. He chose to focus on Martin Luther's idea of peace rather than on civil rights. His speach contained uses of logos, ethos, and pathos with the factual statements he included, his credentials and credibility, and his use of vivid imagery to get us to see and feel. There was also evidence of the speach having forensic, deliberative, and epideictic aspects because he brought up examples from the past struggles of African Americans and people in Rwanda, his emphasis on moving forward to make things even better using the same techniques as Luther stressed, and all at the same time praising Luther for all of his work and efforts in the area.

The idea of peace and acheiving an end result of understanding between different people without violence was a theme that streamed through Young's speach. He gave examples of the things Luther was trying to acheive and that he was trying to do them peaceably with marches and sit-ins, even though the reactions from others in the community and civil authority were not. He did show that by using a peaceful approach, they were able to acheive many of the things they were trying to acheive. He gave more recent examples, such as the incident in Rwanda with the fighting between the "short" and "tall" people. Millions of people lost their lives, and Young was trying to show that they could have gained understanding without having to lose so many lives.

Young also tied into the idea of peace, the idea of dreaming and acheving those dreams. He emphasized Luther's dream of eventually realizing the rid of racism, war, and poverty. He again used examples of how far we have come just in the past fifty years to prove the point that dreams can be acheived even though we are not there yet. He even noted President Bush's dream of one day having Iraq sit in peace with the other countries of power in the world. He ended his speach with a quote by Jessie Jackson that went as follows: "If we can conceive it and beleive it, than we can acheive it."

Although Young's speach was not completely organized and he did not focus on civil rights or the direct life and acheivements of Luther, I still found his speach to be interesting, moving, and containing important information that caused me to think about certain issues and realize just how much progress has been made. Further more, it made me realize how much more we can acheive.