Persuasive Letter From Birmingham Jail

Should freedom be demanded by the people or be given to the hands of the law? Both Civil Rights activist, Martin Luther King and former President Lyndon B. Johnson express in their speeches that freedom must be demanded by the people. Freedom should be demanded by the people because the people have risked their lives so they can be heard and the people struggles in order to gain civic rights.

Likewise, the people risked their lives so they can be heard. According to former President Lyndon B. Johnson speech, “We Shall Overcome”, in paragraph two he states, “So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans.” To clarify what President Johnson means is that a week before he gave this speech, racial violence erupted in Selma, Alabama. The only reason that racial violence did erupt was because the people were protesting. Furthermore, President Johnson also says in paragraph 16, “His actions and protests, his courage to risk safety and even to

In Martin Luther King’s “ I Have A Dream”, in paragraph two he states “One hundred years later, the life the Negroes is still crippled by the mandates of segregation and the chains of discriminations.” To clarify, one hundred years later from when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed to the very day Dr. King gave his speech, the Negro were free but lack their civic rights. The Negroes were still struggling with segregation and racial discrimination. In the same paragraph, Dr. King illustrates, “One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and find himself an exile in his own land.” Dr. King supports the argument that the American society is basically turning against them. Due to this, the American Negroes to go and hide in the ‘corners’ of society.* They struggles for so long always being the odd one