Kings Letter From Birmingham Jail Analysis

An article appeared in the the Birmingham news on April 13, 1963, under the title of White Clergymen Urge Negros to Withdraw from Demonstrations.”. The article summoned the Negro community of Birmingham, Alabama and was signed by many white Alabama clergymen. It was intended for the Negro community to extract there support from the efforts of Martin Luther King and the others connected to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. During this time MLK was locked way in the Birmingham Jail for not having a permit to hold a parade, then again he wasn 't there to hold a parade. His intentions in Birmingham were to lead a non-violent civil rights demonstration against the Jim Crow Laws

It is noticed that he can obey some laws such as the Supreme Courts decision of 1954 of outlawing segregation in the public schools but not obey the Jim Crow Laws. He explains that the reason he opposes to some laws is because be believes there are two types of laws. The difference he explains, is that some laws are just and some are unjust. He urges that people have a moral rights to obey just laws and disobey unjust ones (par.15). He then defines the differences between a just law and an unjust law. He points out that a just law is a moral law or a law of God, and that an unjust law is a law that is dissonant with the moral law. Unjust laws do not have there foundations in eternal law nor natural law (par. 16). He states the that any law that brighten ups “human personality” is a just law and any law that devalues human personality is an unjust law. MLK finishes of by saying that segregation is sinful. He finds this out by breaking it in to part like so; separation is sinful, segregation laws separate, and therefore segregation laws are sinful. Finally, after explaining why he disobeys some laws he makes it clear to the clergymen that segregation laws are unjust and sinful. Thus, he strongly believes that the Jim crow law should be disobeyed because they are “morally wrong” (par.

19).

Here we see Kings argument fall under the strategies logos and ethos. This time he appeals to personal experience under logos. His argument to the clergymen is that laws are just but they can become unjust when they are used for the wrong reasons. According to Miller this is appealing to personal experience, King first hand experiences this when he gets arrested. He strongly feels that it is unjust to put a man in jail just to deny him his freedom of peaceful protest. The whites know and as well as himself knows that he is being wrongly accuse and he doesn 't deserve this unjustness. As well as appealing to ethos his character in this paragraph establishes that he is one of knowledge, he analyzes and argues in a manner that is striking. An example is when king puts into play that he agrees with laws but then says he will not stand for a law that is wrongly used to deny him his