Ethos Pathos Logos In Letter From Birmingham Jail

The rhetorical situation for the letters by the eight white clergymen and King begins with rallying cries to further the civil rights movement. This was a result of the segregation and injustice that was still occurring in Alabama. King was jailed for participating in a march on Good Friday and further protest ensued. After this instance black and white leaders began to negotiate terms to end segregation. The idea behind this is that America had refused to allow everyone the American dream, and that we were not upholding the ideas we supposedly held so dear. The audience for the clergymen was primarily the Negro community who were constrained by the belief that they were being heavily oppressed. The audience for Martin Luther King Jr.

Likewise, an example of logical proof that the clergymen use is “Such actions as to incite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed to the resolution of our local problems” (175). They state this to reinforce the main claim by providing extra support to prove demonstrations are not solving any problems. The clergymen build credibility when they state “ “We agree rather with local Negro leadership which has called for honest and open negotiation of racial issues in our area” (175). This builds ethos by showing that the clergymen are making an effort to negotiate with the Negro community rather than outright ignore them. One example of emotional proof in the clergymen’s letter was when they state “We commend the community as a whole, and the local news media and law enforcement officials in particular, on the calm manner in which these demonstrations have been handled” (175). In the clergymen’s letter they state “we are now confronted by a series of demonstrations by some of our Negro citizens, directed and led in part by outsider.” The clergymen disagree with the reasoning of King and why he does things such as marching, and their rebuttal is that these events are unwise and

King uses multiple analogies throughout his letter such as when he compares his own demonstrations for justice to those of early Christians who were scorned by those who saw them as different. He stated “Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were a “colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man” (186). This analogy had a major impact because the letter was directed at leaders of the Christian church who were rejecting people just as the Christians were rejected. King was also very effective at using emotional proofs in his letter such as when he states “Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known” (176). This was used to show how bad the situation of racial injustice was in certain areas and why change needed to occur. King builds credibility multiple times throughout the paper for example he says “I am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town.” He states this after comparing himself to the Apostle Paul who spread the gospel of Jesus to the far corners of the world” (176). This shows that he is on a mission similar to Paul who is