Summary Of Letter From Birmingham Jail

In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Jr. uses politics, attempts to define unjust law, and imagery of violent treatment of protesters in order to argue that standards and non-violence are the most effective strategies in overcoming segregation. He also argues that those who truly want change need to be ready for action and protest now rather than forever holding their peace and living in a world of segregation. Martin Luther King compares international civil rights campaigns in order to shame the clergy into realizing how far behind American civil rights are. When Martin Luther King says, “we have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with

When Martin Luther King says, “I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust … is in reality expressing the highest respect for law” (96). Martin Luther King’s use of referring to the nature of law helps in further proving his argument that African Americans cannot wait anymore to fight the segregation they are being faced with. These people need to realize that it is evidently the truth and that they are being and isn’t going to dismantle without those being deprived and discriminated against realizing that the laws are changed for them because they are seen as inferior. The fact that an African American individual is willing to break a law from their “conscious” and face the punishment of going to jail illuminates their “highest respect” for the want of equality. If the African American were to simply say that the law is unjust but not take advocacy toward it then there wouldn’t be a changed outcome. The law would just stay the same. The unjust law as a whole is making whites feel a superior and African Americans inferior and that is the false sense that the unjust laws are creating as a whole. Furthermore, when Martin Luther King says, “[he] had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the the flow of social progress” (97). Martin Luther King’s alludes to unjust law hoping that the clergy realizes that the laws “dangerously structured” and that it is seen as a “block” to social change. Laws exist for “law and order,” but that isn’t the case regarding African Americans. It is evident that Martin Luther King refers to the meaning of unjust law in order to