In the address with full of honor and rememberance of Rosa Parks on February 27, 2013, former president Barack Obama utilizes a wide range of rhetorical strategies, namely an anecdote, parallelism, and a list accompanied by a juxtaposition and a unifying pronoun, in order to honor Rosa Parks' life and her actions, while calling his people of the new era to live up to her values and beliefs.

Barack Obama spends the majority of the speech to tell a specific story of Rosa Parks, about her famous "disobedience" and how it shapes the Civil Rights Movement. It is concluded in one single quote: "'Nobody ever bossed Rosa around and got away with it.'" Truly, Parks has proven herself to be a true warrior by not accepting the demands made by the bus driver, even when "he threatened to have her arrested." The story does not just portray Rosa Parks as a strong woman who fought for what she believed was right, it also portrays the power of the community at the time, giving credits to Martin Luther King Jr. and the people of Montgomery, Alabama. By continuing the story of Parks challenging the arrest, Obama highlights that when someone is dare to stand up for the right, they will have the support of the people who also believe in justice. Former president Obama then ends the story with an ending the audience wants to hear: "Three hundred and eighty-five days after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, the boycott ended." Three hundred and eighty-five days is not a short amount of time, and President Obama wants to highlight that in more than a year, blood, sweat, and tears of many people, including Rosa Parks, had fallen for the boycott to achieve victory. Acknowledging the victory of the boycott is honoring and valuing the actions of Rosa Parks and other people of the same struggle, while reminding the audience of the power of perseverance, which could turn the impossible into the truth.

President Obama then reminds the audience that it was not the only occasion which we saw a woman named Rosa Parks fighting for the rights of African Americans. For that, Barack Obama uses parallelism, stating that Rosa Parks had "stood up for freedom, stood up for equality," qualifying the claims by saying Rosa Parks had been "fighting for voting rights, rallying against discrimination, [and] serving in the local chapter of the NAACP." The audience gets to hear two occasions of parallelism at the same time; the first time is when Obama deliberately uses "stood up" followed by the two values Americans hold dear of, the second time is when Obama lists out the specific actions taken by Rosa Parks using verbs in progressive tense such as "fighting" and "rallying." By purposefully repeating phrases and verbs with similiar grammatical structures, President Obama is implanting the idea of a strong and persistent Rosa Parks into the minds of the people listening to him, with the intention of helping them recognize the hard work of Rosa Parks, further strengthening his message of honoring Parks' life and actions. Obama then draws back to the story of the bus seat, continuing to use parallelism by saying that Mrs. Parks was alone in the seat, "clutching her purse, staring out a window, waiting to be arrested." The parallelism of verbs in progressive tense this time portrays Rosa Parks as a nonchalant, strong woman who was not afraid of the threats that were coming her way, as she knew she was a soldier in this battle for equal rights. By drawing back to the story, Obama wants the audience to admire Rosa Parks, her actions, and her fearlessness even more.

Near the end of the speech, President Obama deliberately lists the unfortunate things people are seeing right now -- "children hungry in a land of plenty, entire neighborhoods ravaged by violence, families hobbled by job loss or illness." By doing so, Barack Obama is appealing to the sympathy of the audience, making them feel the pain of the miserables living in the same land that is supposed to be the land of opportunities and equality. Knowing that the audience would then question themselves about their ability to make a better place for the human race, President Obama takes the initiative and states that "we say [...] there's nothing I can do[, but] Rosa Parks tells us there's always something we can do." We. The use of this unifying pronoun while Obama is juxtaposing the people's doubt of their ability with Rosa Parks' firm belief of a change for a better world emphasizes the final and most important message Obama wants people to hear: "we" can do better. "We" have the power, the finance, and the knowledge to turn this world into the place Rosa Parks had in her imagination. One individual had proven herself to be able to participate in such a massive and influential movement of the 20th century that improved the life of millions of Americans, "we" as a country should be able to do the same. America has witness progress throughout its history of more than two hundred years, and the progress never stops. Finally, President Obama wants people to acknowledge that, while statues could be place at anywhere at anytime, "we can do no greater honor to her memory than to carry forward the power of her principle and a courage born of conviction." Barack Obama, the first Black president of the United States, proves himself to have the same dream and passion as Rosa Parks had, and he wants his people to fight for the freedom and justice that Rosa Parks had spent her whole life fighting for. That is how "we" can honor her.

President Barack Obama has called his people to live and fight for Rosa Parks' ideal future as a way to honor her contribution to freedom and justice in the United States by utilizing effective rhetorical devices in his address dedicating the Rosa Parks statue in the National Statuary Hall on February 27, 2013. Through this address, President Obama wants his people to acknowledge Rosa Park's life and her work even more, while realizing that every single one of them is a warrior, just like Rosa Parks, who has the ability to heal the world and make it a better place with their bare hands. The wheel of history is always turning, and victory for freedom and justice will always prevail at the end.