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Inequality In Martin Luther King's Letter From A Birmingham Jail

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Inequality and racism have always been present in the history of America. Many people battle these injustices through different forms, such as writing, speaking, or protesting. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Frederick Douglass are both experienced in writing and speaking against certain injustices. In Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” as well as in Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?” they claim that injustice and inequality must be combatted in order for everyone to be free and equal. Martin Luther King, Jr., asserts that the injustices of the nation must be fought. King likes to compare the African American struggle for equality to the early Christian struggle for religious recognition. …show more content…

The author’s antithesis embedded in the anaphora, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” illustrates how crucial it is to battle injustice so that justice is not harmed (King). King does not want to threaten the justices in the nation through his protests, but rather the injustices in the nation. The general truth in the aphorism effects ethos by stating that the people’s justices will be endangered if injustices are not dealt with soon. The antithesis in the statement highlights that, while there are reasonable laws, there are also unreasonable laws that must be confronted in order to keep the nation in peace. Inequality is not felt by just those who are subjugated. The inequality that “affects one directly” will eventually “[affect] all indirectly” (King). King’s second antithesis proves that the oppressed black race is experiencing inequality right now, but in the future that inequality will impact others if it is not handled. The antithesis compares the oppressed to the oppressors by hinting at the fact that inequality affects everyone. With that in mind, King is calling for all people to stand …show more content…

One of Douglass’s main claims is that the slaves cannot celebrate that which is not theirs. The “blessings in which” the whites celebrate are “shared by [them], not by [the slaves]” (Douglass). Frederick Douglass’s antithesis and parallelism prove that the slaves cannot celebrate freedom on the Fourth of July because they are not free. In order for all Americans to be able to celebrate independence, the injustices must be combated. The antithesis in Douglass’s claim illustrates how different the two groups are; the white celebrate an invalid freedom while the slaves mourn the absence of their freedom. Parallelism highlights the number of different ways the slaves feel oppressed in contrast to the white Americans. White men and women live in a place where they can celebrate freedom, but black men and women yearn for a place of their own, away from the bondage of slavery. The author’s allusion to the “rivers of Babylon” and the people’s cries from “[remembering] Zion,” or the free land, emphasizes the slaves’ need for freedom (Douglass). As aforementioned, the slaves wept over their need for their own personal Zion where they could be free. If the injustice of slavery was defeated, then America would be the Zion where the former slaves would be free. The allusion serves to express in biblical terms what the slaves felt in order to make Douglass’s argument be understood

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