Reflective Essay On Martin Luther King

Essay Assignment
The story about Martin Luther King is the story about a leader who encouraged peaceful, non-violent actions towards racial emancipation of African Americans. After the abolition of slavery, black Americans were still regarded by many as second-class citizens. Freedom and prosperity, the traditional American values, were neither privileges nor rights of black Americans and discrimination against them was still rampant and obvious. Protest actions started as far back as in the forties of the last century but it was not until twenty years later that they began attracting the attention on the American public. Deeply inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s work and teaching, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King decided to use the same,

King’s non-violent methods of struggle for justice and civil rights may be seen as tilting at windmills, but the truth is that he was well aware of importance of nonviolent forms of protest as of realistic alternatives to violent conflicts. According to him, each non-violent campaign is comprised of four basic steps. The first of them refers to investigation and collection of the facts which if done properly shall clearly confirm whether any injustice has been committed or not. This is done by careful assessment, verification and reporting of incidents that may be considered as violation of basic principles of justice and human rights. As for this step, Dr. King says: “There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in this nation. These are hard, brutal and unbelievable

King uses metaphor and compares racial injustice to a boil: “Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured”. Boil alludes to something ugly and bad, something that should be lanced and drained to be healed just like the racial injustice should be publicly revealed in order to be