Analysis Of Letter From Birmingham Jail

1. What is the name of your source and when was it produced?

The name of my source is Letter from Birmingham Jail and it was produced April 16, 1963.

2. Who was the author/creator of this document and how are they related to the event they are talking about?

The creator of this document was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He is related to this event he is talking about because he has dealt with it firsthand. He wrote this letter in response to a statement made by 8 white Alabama clergymen titled, “A call for Unity,” which agreed that social injustices were taking place but felt that the battle against racial segregation should be fought in the courts and not in the streets. As he stated in the letter “ When you suddenly find your tongue twisted

How can you not go out into the street in protest when every day you watch one of your own being killed, beaten, and humiliated by white people? Going to court can only do but so much, and it takes forever for them to come to decisions. Another thing I think is important is that he was arrested for parading without a permit but that ordinance was used to preserve segregation. Something else I think is important is that he talks about “how any law that degrades human personality is unjust and how segregation statuses are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.”

5. Why do you think the document was written?

He wrote this letter in response to a statement made by 8 white Alabama clergymen a few days earlier titled, “A call for Unity,” which conceded that social injustices were taking place but expressed the belief that the battle against racial segregation should be fought solely in the courts and not taken into the streets. He explained a bunch of situations that he and the black community was dealing with, the beating, the insults, the lynching and all the places that were segregated so that they would understand at least a little bit why they find it difficult to wait.

6. How do you think this source will contribute to your

His main argument is how even today the images, the memory of “racial cleansing” still remains. He began to dig into the days after hurricane Katrina, into some truths that even I didn’t know. Katrina was hard on everyone but mostly on the black poor people. The ones who lived in the “lower-lying neighborhoods”, that couldn’t help themselves or escape. They were left for Katrina to just wipe them out, they had no safe haven. A lot of blacks trying to evacuate the city on a bridge across the Mississippi River were forced back into the city.”

4. List three things in the document that you think are important.

The One thing in this document I think is important is that he talks about how during Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X’s day they protested and sung songs of hope for the future and how after they died the songs captured a different mood. Another thing I think is important would be that a lot of blacks reached their breaking point during World War II. They lost respect for whites and the ones that fought in the war also lost fear of whites. Something else I think is important is by the 1970s, the whites preferred to abandon the public schools and the cities instead of share power and community with the colored.

5. How do you think this source will contribute to your