Analysis Of Martin Luther King Letter From Birmingham Jail

Letter from a Birmingham Jail Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a civil rights leader, was put into jail after being part of the Birmingham campaign in April 1963. He was the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was asked by an Alabama group to come to Birmingham. He and members of his organization joined The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and organized non-violent protests against racial segregation. Because of these nonviolent protests, many of his followers were put into jail. Alabama clergymen published a announcement in the paper stating blacks should not support Martin Luther King Jr. and the other protesters. While in jail, Dr. King replied with a letter directed towards these men and the rest of
The clergymen felt that Dr. King and his people were disrupting the peace with the city. These men failed to notice that The Alabama Christian Leadership Conference had tried times before to make peace with the city. Nothing was ever done about the issue. An example Dr. King stated was that the legislature of Alabama set up the state’s segregation laws and there are all sorts of methods used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters. There are unjust laws that are agreeing with segregation and denying the first amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest. The clergymen were being bias and only cared about their side of the facts. Nonviolent action needed to take place in order for
King appeals to the black audiences but also to the white in his letter to show them all the effects of segregation. He understood that not everyone has experienced segregation so he described the emotions for everyone to understand. He used emotional stories and painted a picture for the audiences. “But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled police curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can 't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental shy, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated