Martin Luther King's Letter From Birmingham Jail

The civil rights movement and coinciding events were revealed as a monumental declaration for certain groups of people. For other groups of people, it served as a reminder of the misdirection that the United States of America had been taking in terms of moving forward. Together, they compile into a collection of political, social, and moral reactions of various populations towards the civil rights movement and towards African Americans. Specifically, these were positive and negative reactions that were perceived towards Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, the “I Have a Dream” speech, and the civil rights campaign which had originated in Birmingham, Alabama. People were led to believe different things about these events

The common factor from this time period and that time period of the early 1950’s is that the media is the primary source of enlightenment. Families would look to the media to provide them comfort and ease. When people are desperate to feel safe, however they can attain that safety is what they will use to their advantage. When people passively listen, they listen to what they want to hear. In the lives of many families whom were against the civil rights movement, their minds were already set on how to live their lives and so they chose to ignore the rest. Similarly, when people already make up their minds and perceive events such as the civil rights movement to look as if it could even be just potentially dangerous, then those people who are seeking safety and comfortability are already against it. I am writing this essay to show the repercussions that close minded people will have and how close minded people will use information to their advantage, instead of letting information create an open

The “Southern way of life” was a mix of economic, social, and cultural practices. The civil rights struggle threatened to remove the African Americans from the social “place” that the Southern whites had created for them. Many of the white Southerners believed that African Americans had embraced and enjoyed the role of being second class citizens. As the civil rights campaign tore through the South, it revealed the truth about what African Americans really wanted; freedom. The lives of white Southerners were forever changed after this movement. Attitudes were changed, power was balanced, and equality was now the goal for this