Option: was an act of violence directed mostly at black men.
Explanation:
At the end of the 19th century, the South was growing into racial tension. Southern people accused their financial difficulties on the freed slaves that lived around them. Lynchings were displaying a common way of solving the anger that whites had with freed blacks. For the white Southern, Lynching was necessary because it controls and maintains the freed slaves.
King turns his attention to his listeners' emotions as he quotes passages from the Bible, “My Country Tis of Thee,” and a stirring Negro spiritual. It's the elegant balance between these two elements–the intellectual and the emotional; the head and the heart–that makes his speech so compelling and satisfying
