Ring Out Freedom!

Martin Luther King, Jr. was more than the civil rights movements most visible figure; he was its voice. Ring Out Freedom burrows deeply into King's rhetoric to consider not only his important influences but also how his words helped form and define the civil rights movement. The author shows how materialistic, idealistic, and religious ways of explaining the world coexisted in King's speeches and writings. He delineates the roles of God, Jesus, the church, and "the beloved community" in King's rhetoric. Examining King's use of allusions, Sunnemark points to a strategy of employing different meanings of key ideas to speak to different members of his audience.