Martin Luther King Jr Letter From Birmingham Jail Rhetorical Analysis

One of the most respected political writers of the 20th Century was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and one of his most famous essays was "Letter from Birmingham Jail." In this piece of writing, which King authored to respond to criticisms he had received from eight Birmingham clergymen while awaiting release from his Birmingham prison cell, King clearly demonstrated such a passionate appeal that his words have had a lasting effect ever since. All four discourse modes are present throughout the work, making this an extremely powerful piece. King's narrative and informative passages vibrantly sketch a tumultuous time in American history when the entire country was involved in an emotional dispute over equal rights. According to King's narrative, authorities everywhere had been calling for delays in reformation, taking a 'not now' approach. Understandably impatient with constantly being told to wait, which King explained had come to mean 'Never,' thousands upon thousands of people decided the time had come to hold peaceful but

His other major disappointment was that the white churches of the South had chosen to ignore the freedom movement instead of ally with it. He had hoped that white churchmen would urge their congregations to follow desegregation because it was morally right. Instead, he wrote, they chose to stand on the sidelines, saying it was a social issue of no concern of theirs. Deftly, he used the logos of logic and reason to illustrate the argument that this stance went against everything the church had traditionally stood for. King wrote about the Supreme Court decision of 1954 that outlawed segregation in public schools, arguing how that law, a morally just one, was being ignored by both church and civil leaders as they permitted segregation ordinances to rule