Summary Of Letter From Birmingham Jail

After reading the two letters by the clergymen and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I began to understand where both sides were coming from. In the end I believe Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was right, but the clergymen made good points. In a nutshell when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed for protesting for civil rights in Birmingham, Alabama the clergymen were against it because they thought it brought negative attention on the civil rights movement. They were so enveloped in their conviction that eight clergymen wrote a letter to the editor of the Birmingham, Alabama newspaper to denounce Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s actions. The eight clergymen expressed that they preferred to do things “by the book”, they stated that the issue of civil rights should be solved in a courtroom not in the streets of Birmingham, Alabama. They also hinted resentment towards what they deemed an “outsider” (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) starting a protest in their quiet town of Birmingham.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a magnificent defense of his reasons for starting a protest in Birmingham, Alabama. He didn’t express resentment towards the clergymen that had denounced his protest. Instead, he stated he was disappointed in the actions and the mindset of the clergymen criticizing his behavior. The argument he made was that the white power structure gave Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his brothers no choice. He went on to counter the clergymen’s argument that negotiation was the preferred method by first saying he agreed. However, the city officials have neglected the pleas of the Negro masses to the point they needed a way to direct attention to their cause. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that in order for negotiations to begin (which he agreed was a better solution) the Negro community needed to create a crisis or a state of emergency that would make their cries impossible to ignore. Only then could negotiations