Essay On Letter From Birmingham Jail

Late August of 1619, the first group of Africans arrived at the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia. This begins the struggle to be seen as human for African Americans within the unestablished United States. Established in 1776, the United States of America used slaves religiously to build this new country up from nothing. From the arrival of the first Africans to the end of slavery in 1865, for 246 years the rights of these individuals were dismissed, and they were paraded as animals, merely anything less than human. Though 1865 marked the end of slavery in the United States, the fight for the right to be equivalent to the white man is a fight that we see occurring in today’s day and age. African Americans in this country have never had

believed that not only was it the responsibility of individuals to remedy the situation of racial injustice to achieve inequality but also it was the job of society as a whole (the state). However, Martin Luther King Jr. noted in piece titled, “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” (1963) that, “We know through painful experience that freedom is not voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” (MLK, 580) I find this quote to be important as during the creation of our founding documents, the founding fathers were very intentional as to what they wanted. It was not in the interests of the founding fathers to provide equal rights to everyone, as doing so would ultimately put them all on the same pedestal which would not give them the level of superiority in which they believed they were entitled to. This quote tells us that waiting for an oppressor will not grant results in this case freedom, due to the fact that they benefit from the oppressed group being oppressed. Which leaves the fight for rights to be the oppressed groups job to remedy the

believed that the struggle for equality needed to be recognized at the state level; and called for a transformation of social structures and institutions. In doing so he advocated for peaceful protests, grassroots organizing and more. However, through his liberal individual thinking, Martin Luther King Jr. at the same time believed that individual transformation needs to happen. With this, individuals needed to be able to be able to sit with and engage in internal struggle to overcome the own biases and misconceptions of race that were prevalent. Martin Luther King Jr states that, “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come… Something within him has reminded him of his birthright freedom; something without has reminded him that he can find it.” (MLK, 584). This quote shows the impact that external systems and structures has on the internal struggle for self-determination. One cannot go about changing the external systems and structures, without overcoming the beliefs that those structures put in the oppressed groups head about themself. This shows that the external struggle comes first and plays a deep roll in the manifestation of the internal struggle. Without the external systems and structures convincing minority groups that they are lesser than and do not deserve the same rights, there would ultimately be no internal