Stewart Historical vs Rhetorical Context

Historical Context:
1. An important church within the Civil Rights Movement was bombed only weeks after the large March on Washington, causing a premature end to the successful feeling the march left in the protestors.
"Three weeks after the march, racists bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, a center of movement activity, during Sunday services and killed four young girls" (490).

2. Meredith was leading a Mississippi tour to promote voting amongst the African American population. After only two days, he was injured and so the tour was taken up by Martin Luther King Jr and other important black leader.
"On the second day of his march, Meredith was shot from ambush by a white racist" (491).

3. At a turning point in the movement in 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. called off a march to avoid loss of innocent life which heightened bad feelings between the participants.
"Disillusionment with movement leaders and their white liberal allies escalated in March 1965 when participants in the Selma to Montgomery march were beaten and Martin Luther King Jr. turned the march around a few days later rather than risk bloodshed from heavily armed police waiting for the marchers" (490).

4. Protesters were forbidden from staying overnight legally by illegal force on the part of state police. Stokely Carmichael resisted this action by the police. As a result, he was arrested.
"That moment arrived on June 17 in Greenwood, Mississippi--the heart of SNCC country--when state troopers decided that marchers could not put up their sleeping tents on the grounds of a black high school, even though they have permission to do so, and arrested Stokely Carmichael when he ignored their order "(491).

5. In 1964, there was massive bloodshed for the sake of the movement. It included fatal and wounding casualties.
"Summer of 1964 there were six murders, thirty-five shootings, sixty-five bombings and burnings of homes, businesses, and churches, and at least eighty recorded beatings" (490).

Rhetorical Context:

1. Carmichael decides to use the term "Black Power" during a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement (491).

2. "Malcolm toured the country during the spring and summer of 1964 giving differing versions of the "Ballot or the Bullet" speech in which he addressed the growing frustrations of black Americans with the failure of government…" (490).

3. "Yes, had you marching back and forth between the feet of a dead man named Lincoln and another dead man named George Washington, singing "We shall overcome" (490).