Response to Juan Williams by Christy Hardegree and Maura Shaughnessy

Juan Williams spoke on Thursday night about the significance of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We felt that this speech was much more organized and held a more structured goal in view, than did the speech of Andrew Young. We were easily able to identify the telos of the speech to be the importance of the right of everyone to vote.
This speech was primarily forensic because Williams focused on the history of the Civil Rights Movement. He seemed to lead the audience up to the importance of the Voting Rights Act with examples of what has happened when groups were unable to vote. He did include some deliberative aspects in his explanation of how the past will become the future and why we should be so concerned with voting.
Williams was introduced as a man with good ethos; having been a journalist for the Washington Post, being a political analyst for Fox News, and having published an award winning book. He also increased his ethos with the many stories of his time spent with Thurgood Marshall and his discussion of the Supreme Court cases of Brown v. Board of Education and Smith v. Allwright. Lastly, his ethos was established on the basis of his race and age.
The speech contained a good balance of both logos and pathos. First, he used a good deal of logos because he had so many examples of the power of white supremacy. These examples also carried a great deal of pathos because they were such vivid images. His stories of the chicken wire on the buses, lynchings, and threats from the KKK evoked many sorrowful images for the audience. Also, his description of Bloody Sunday was a good use of pathos. He also expressed the logic that was felt by many women of the time; that black and white women were equal.