Analysis Of Letter To Mr. Barr, By Martin Luther King Jr.

Throughout the 1960’s the ideas of the civil rights movement, the age of rock and roll, and the rise of Martin Luther King Jr. led to a greater push towards freedom. African Americans were seeing a significant change in their civil rights, along with women, and Mexican- Americans. Many started their own movements, protests and revolts to ensure their basic freedoms would be kept and these movements allowed others to follow and fight for their same freedoms. Although many believed their basic freedoms were being kept, some Mexican-Americans and even college students want the full freedoms they deserved. In 1969, César Chavez wrote a letter to Mr. Barr, the president of the California Grape and Tree Fruit League, expressing that the protestors weren’t nonviolent, they were just expressing their rights to unionize. Chavez uses the argument of Martin Luther King Jr. and how he believed in the “nonviolent struggle for peace and justice”. He uses the phrase, “…we are not beasts of burden, agricultural implements or rented slaves…” to explain to Mr. Barr that the workers are protesting for their rights to work in a unionized setting. They would not become violent even if their requests weren’t met. Violence was

Barbara and John Ehrenreich were two of these students; they traveled to Europe and highlighted the fact of student rebellion and how it became an international affair. From their article, they state, “ people were getting used to the sight of thousands of students marching, picketing or rallying.” These ordinary college students all across Europe were protesting and fighting for their rights. It had become such a huge epidemic that people weren’t focusing on the communism that was still around, they were focusing on the “revolutionary students” of the world. The students were never frightened, they were fighting for what they believed in, and nothing was going to stop