On May 17th, 1957, Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the public in a speech, “Give us the ballot,” Address at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. In his fight for civil rights, this was one important speech. He addressed the issue of voting rights for African Americans. His speech seemed like a sermon, especially when he attacked the strength of the leadership on the country at different levels. He talked about how their ways to prevent African Americans from participating in voting, was undemocratic and went against what this country stood for. He tried to show that the inclusion of African Americans in the voting process would almost eliminate the need for campaigns about their basic rights, when he says “Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.”
Even though this was a speech given a long time ago, this issue still exists in another way. Even though, we all have voting rights nowadays, we still don’t know that our voices are being heard. There is no guarantee we have to know that our votes are being used just as they were cast. Even though they introduced glass ballot boxes to represent transparency, there’s no way to know that the votes were not rigged and results were not forged in any way.
So what do you guys think? Do you think that there are way other ways to hold the government accountable for completely transparent and non-forged elections?
Als, do you think that maybe this is the reason that a lot of the youth these days don’t really have the zeal to vote or get involved in picking a leader for our country?
Source:
L. King Jr., Martin. “17 May, 1957, “Give Us the Ballot,” Address at the Prayer Pilgrimage for the Freedom.” http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_give_us_the_ballot_address_at_the_prayer_pilgrimage_for_freedom/index.html
Your analysis manages to break down the various elements of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s speech. You then proceed by talking about his actual message that he wanted to pass onto the crowd that had gathered there that day. But as I read further I noticed that you then changed the subject a little bit. Even though you still maintained the issue that has surrounded ballots in the United States, you changed the topic from what Dr. Martin Luther King said about giving the ballot to black people to the issue of rigged ballot boxes that affect the outcome of elections. I feel that both topics are equally important but yet soo different. Due to this, I did not know whether you were trying to compare and contrast the two topics are whether the second topic was there to corroborate the first topic in Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech.
Overall you had a good understanding of the speech which is paramount to this post, but the two topics you chose are vastly different and warrant more elaboration as to how they fit together.
I like the way you analyzed ” Give Us the Ballot”, in which the reader could see him trying to make the point that once these rights are given to African Americans by the government, they won’t be bothered anymore. Although i disagree with this, because there are many more rights that were “given” to African Americans, but of course with a catch. As stated in the last comment you do switch to another idea, which appears to be the fact that there could be rigging in the elections without our knowledge. I feel if you would have introduced another contemporary text to compare to “Give Us the Ballot”, your arguments would have been stronger. An example could have been an article about rigging in urban polling areas, then it would have been comparable to the fact that African Americans had to fight for their right to vote, and even when they got it there were still barriers keeping them from exercising it.