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Analysis Of Letter From Birmingham Jail

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Letter from Birmingham jail Analysis
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ was written by Martin Luther King in the year 1963. This open letter was written by King from a Birmingham jail in Alabama, where he had been imprisoned for participating in the arrangement and organization of a peaceful protest. The protest was in opposition to racial segregation by Birmingham’s city government. King wrote his letter in response to criticisms from a number of white clergymen from Alabama. These clergymen believed that though racial discrimination and segregation were wrong, King’s method’s were not the way to fix the problem. Luther uses his experiences, knowledge and perspective to illustrate the troubles of the Black community. By building his credibility, …show more content…

He starts of by introducing himself as the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Given that he’s directly addressing Christian clergymen, this introduction gives him a slight boost to his credibility because it relates them to himself via religious values. He also compares himself to the Christian figure Paul to refute the clergymen’s criticism that he should not be in Birmingham in the first place. King says “Just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the Gospel of freedom beyond my own home town.” (204). King builds up his credibility by both demonstrating his knowledge of Paul, and comparing himself to him in an effective way. By doing this, he boosts the power of his future arguments, while also refuting a criticism from the …show more content…

He deals with the facts of the situation in a way his critics fail to and details the local political situation and the ramifications of the recent elections. The letter explains in detail why non-violent disobedience is the ideal way to proceed and refutes each element of the argument put forward by clergymen, one by one. For example, one of the criticisms from the clergymen was that King was breaking the law. King's argument against that was that just laws should be followed, while unjust laws should be openly and deliberately disobeyed. He then goes on in detail to explain what makes a law just or unjust. King says

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726 Words | 3 Pages

In paragraph 1, King establishes his purpose for writing the letter. According to this paragraph, King found a statement made by the clergymen criticizing his actions. He felt that the clergymen had clearly thought out their criticisms and were good people at heart, so he decided to respond in a rational way. He uses formal structure in this paragraph to show respect for the clergymen and to show that he is a reasonable man.

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448 Words | 2 Pages

Martin Luther King, Jr. attempts to persuade clergymen to follow in his civil rights movement through exhibiting his knowledge over just and unjust laws, displaying peaceful behavior, and empathetic diction. King was very knowledgeable about laws and his right as a human. King stated laws in his letter to the clergymen, which displayed his credibility. He did not only state laws, he also stated just and unjust laws. King stated, “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?”

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He approaches his audience in a very calm and mature manner saying, “I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms”(King 1). He chooses to talk to his audience in a very non aggressive and confronting way, making it an effective letter. He is able to voice and argue his point without offending or attacking the opposing view. King establishes his common ground by mentioning that some of his audience is taken back by the idea of his traveling outside of his hometown to Birmingham, but he has the right to be doing so.

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507 Words | 3 Pages

In King’s letter from Birmingham, he concludes his 50 paragraph letter by using specific rhetorical strategies in order to connect himself to the clergymen to whom he writes by shifting his tone from the disturbed and excited writing in the rest of the letter to one that is calm and composed toward his current situation in jail, and also by using more positive imagery and language. His attitude immediately changes in these closing three paragraphs in an attempt to assure the clergymen that he is reasonable in all his assertions, even asking for forgiveness for any over- or understated claims, apologizing for ever straying from the path of truth and patience, and he also asks “God to forgive [him]” (para. 49). After this last sentence of paragraph

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The use of the historical and biblical allusions/ references being used is to help build a standard ground for his audiences and the clergymen; it also helps make his letter more effective. King 's letter uses biblical allusions to create analogies between

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Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”: Just and Unjust Laws Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is a letter to eight white clergymen while he’s sitting in a jail cell, the result of a protest in Birmingham, Alabama that King, a Georgian, traveled to attend. Due to the criticisms of the clergymen, he commences his letter by explaining why he needed to come to Birmingham. King states that he was there for a multitude of reasons, the first being that he had organizational ties to Birmingham, the second being that he was there because there was injustice in Birmingham. He states that as a citizen of America, injustice in Birmingham is not removed from justice anywhere else because everything is interrelated, and that injustice

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526 Words | 3 Pages

King starts off by stating, “ My Dear Fellow Clergymen.” By King stating that it proves to me that he is qualifying himself to be at the same level as the clergymen, and that he is not saying he is better or worse than them as despite himself being in jail. King also states that, “So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here. But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.”

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The way that King spoke to the clergymen of the town spoke volumes about the strength of his resolve because, even though he wasn’t getting the support that he needed, King didn’t respond in a violent manner. One clear instance of this is at the very beginning of his letter when he states “my dear fellow clergymen”, showing how he has no ill will towards them and that he still wants their support (King 563). Even though King still wanted support from the local churches and treated them with the respect that they deserved he wanted supporters that were certain to help, so he chastised them in order to assure that their support would be definitive. This is shown when King talks about the inactivity of the local churches against the problems in their communities and that they should be more active (564). As King talks to his audience he gets them involved in the conversation and conveys the feeling of

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King directly responds to the points brought up by the clergymen in their letter and always backs up his argument with evidence. He objectively uses rhetorical questions to provoke the clergymen to consider his own ideas on the points raised in their letter. He aims to put turn a negative situation, into a positive one by hoping that positive social change can come out of a negative situation such as

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1082 Words | 5 Pages

King disagrees with the accusations, and is at first slightly offended. He argues that as a man of God he went out of his way to ensure that his acts and the acts of his supporters were as nonviolent as possible. He then emphasizes that without his peaceful and orderly conduct chaos and havoc would emerge and the streets of the South would be “flowing with blood”. In this section of the letter king creates very strong imagery. The reader will began to visualize riots, destruction, and death from both white and African-American men in the state of Alabama.

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1401 Words | 6 Pages

"Letter from Birmingham Jail" was written by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on 16 April 1963 in a solitary confinement cell in Birmingham, Alabama. He had terrible conditions when writing this letter since it is known that some parts of this letter were smuggled out by his lawyer on scraps of paper and even rough jailhouse toilet paper. Things were not looking good on Birmingham either, violent racism terror against black people was so bad that the city was being called “Bombingham” by some residents. But these things did not make King give up, he stood up for what he believes is true and he fought for it. In the following paragraphs, we will look at a brief summary of the letter to understand it better and after that we will try to see

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649 Words | 3 Pages

Response to “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr. In Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, he responded to statements written in a Birmingham newspaper that criticized his actions in the city. He undermined these disapprovals by explaining his belief in nonviolent direct action. King also went on to give opinions on other topics, such as, the lack of support from white moderates and white churches. He used technique and structure to develop his ideas and justify his methods.

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957 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout King’s argument, he appealed his own ethos to his opponents by saying “I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth”. Dr.

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959 Words | 4 Pages

In 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. was sent to jail because of a peaceful protest, protesting treatments of blacks in Birmingham. Before the protest a court ordered that protests couldn’t be held in Birmingham. While being held in Birmingham, King wrote what came to be known as the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Not even King himself could predict how much of an impact this letter would have on the Civil Rights Movement. In the letter kind defended Kings beliefs on Nonviolent Protests, King also counters the accusations of him breaking laws by categorizing segregation laws into just and unjust laws. King uses this principle to help persuade others to join him in his acts of civil disobedience.

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907 Words | 4 Pages

In terms of legacies, Martin Luther King Jr. is an example of someone whose legacy has left an impact on a great many fields. The first to come to mind for most would be civil rights activism, as he was an instrumental figure in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. However, Martin Luther King Jr is an extremely influential figure in the field of oration and rhetoric. His Letter from Birmingham Jail is a work that he wrote while incarcerated in the Birmingham City Jail in response to criticism from Alabama clergymen. This letter is a prime example of King’s expertise in constructing persuasive rhetoric that appealed to the masses at large.

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