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Brooker T. Washington Rhetorical Situation + RAPS

Prompt

Response

ASPECT

  • Audience: White and African American leaders, president (Grover Cleveland)
  • Speaker: Booker T. Washington
  • Purpose: To promote racial inclusivity
  • Exigence: Rise of Jim Crow laws and segregation, as well as lynching
  • Context: 1895 in Atlanta, Georgia. The speech was delivered near the height of the Jim Crow segregation and racial violence in the South.
  • Thesis: Washington's main message was that African Americans should focus on economic advancement and vocational education rather than political agitation and civil rights activism.

Thesis

In the Atlanta Exposition Speech, Brooker T. Washington employs rhetorical strategies such as repetition, anaphora, and appeal to authority to encourage African American to seek industrial progress and to stay united.

RAPS

Booker T. Washington employs the use of strategic repetition to encourage African Americans to seek industrial progress and befriend of all races, shown in multiple anecdotes where he urges African Americans to "cast down your bucket where you are”

Washington’s use of anaphora provides emphasis emphasizes the importance of unity among African Americans, with examples such as "in all things...we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand" and that "it is important and right...but it is vastly more important that we be prepared”

Booker T. Washington employs an appeal to authority to emphasize the importance of industrial progress for African Americans, stating that "it is in the South that the Negro is given a man's chance...and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance.”