Most of the scholarly work on the rhetoric of the civil rights movement has focused on the speech... more Most of the scholarly work on the rhetoric of the civil rights movement has focused on the speeches, writing, and actions of African-American protestors who fought against segregation and to gain equal rights or on violent physical responses by whites to the actions of African-American protestors. Much less research and writing have focused on examining the local spoken or written responses to the grassroots-level agitation of marches and sit-ins. This work helps to fill that gap by identifying the core rhetorical strategy used by Wayne C. Freeman, editor of the Greenville News, in editorials defending segregation in 1960. This essay expands upon the idea of a rhetoric of "victimage," as put forward by Kenneth Burke and Friedrich Nietzsche, to show how Freeman reframed white southerners as victims of slander, discrimination, and violence in order to justify continued resistance to integration.
lack theology, as first put forth by James H. Cone, was designed as a new form of Godtalk that co... more lack theology, as first put forth by James H. Cone, was designed as a new form of Godtalk that could speak to the experiences and spirituality of African Americans. Crafting his work in the 1960s and 1970s, Cone observed a racial crisis in American society, and objected to the entrenched social, economic, and political structures that espoused white supremacy and systematically oppressed black people. He wrote Black Theology and Black Power and A Black Theology of Liberation to serve as a message of hope and freedom for black people -reinterpreting the Bible in light of God as a liberator in order to explicate a theology that was proactive and revolutionary. In these works Cone also indicted the white church and American society for their deeply embedded racism and lack of adherence to truly Christian principles. While the last 40 years have seen various improvements in the lives of African Americans, the same power structures still shape our country, and the crisis has not been ameliorated. As such, black liberation theologies still serve a purpose today, for white people as well as black. This paper will attempt to posit what it is that white people can learn from reading black liberation theology, both as individuals and for the white church as a whole. Cone's writing, through his description of the black experience in a white society, raises questions and concerns about what it means to be white. Then, by creating his theology, he also gives an example by which all Christian churches could learn something: Cone points out the failure of the church to take into account real human experiences and work to better them, he puts forward the possibility and value of new hermeneutical sources, and he warns against ignorantly cloaking racism in ideas of universality. However, while Cone is one of the first to put forward these ideas, his recommendations for change to the white community are insufficient, so we must look beyond his work to craft concrete plans to improve white identity, action, and religion.
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Papers by Jennifer Hill