Dr. Martin Luther King, a prominent figure in the Civil Rights movement, was a man of integrity. King advocated that nonviolent civil disobedience was the way to achieve racial justice in the fight for desegregation. He, along with the members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, would hold many demonstrations and marches, as well as nonviolent, public disobedience of unjust laws, throughout his desegregation journey. Each time they would form to stand for their rights, King knew that there would be consequences. They ranged from public backlash to the harshest punishment of jail time. In Kings most famous writings, “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, his audience, which was then his fellow clergymen, get an insight as to what civil disobedience, moderates, and race meant to him. As defined, civil disobedience is a nonviolent, public refusal to obey allegedly unjust laws. From behind the bars of the Birmingham, Alabama jail, King defends his timing and need to help the African Americans of Birmingham stand up for their civil right to be equal as all of the other community members, meaning to be equal to the white population. He explains to the clergymen that “We …show more content…
Although he was defending a racially charged question his fellow clergymen questioned, King’s argument seldom categorized the racial issue of segregation as a “Black and White” issue; however it was presented on the basis of what was moral or “just”. To demonstrate that his civil disobedience was that of a moral issue, King states in his letter “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that I what has happened to the American Negro.”(King137-138) He has taken the racial charge out of the situation by referring to the fellow American Negro as “oppressed people” as opposed to using racial terms. His tack in words opens his thoughts from being focused on one race to all