Summary Of Letter From Birmingham Jail

In “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., King addresses the dynamics of social power in the United States. Social power is defined as the degree of influence that an individual or organization has among their peers and within their society as a whole. This idea is illustrated throughout King’s letter to show the significance of the disadvantages and unfair treatment the black community has faced for the entirety of their existence. The black community has never been able to gain the respect of others they deserve, due to racism. Martin Luther King is able to express these ideas by referencing multiple examples as to how social power has negatively affected their societal presence for many years. Dr. King uses multiple

King shows this social power white control by detailing how the white race does not want justice, they want to maintain order. The order during this time period is having control and power over all other races. King says how the inability of the white moderate to establish justice will result in them becoming dangerously structured dams blocking the flow of social progress. Dams are designed to hold back water, and King compares this to the white moderate as they are holding back the social progress. Dr. King also mentions how this black oppression is “like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured”(5). The problems and distress that have been put upon the black community have been covered up with no cure or fix to this obstacle. Injustice has been covered up by the white

Martin Luther King uses this ability he has in writing to the clergymen about the struggles the black race has faced, in order to detail the history of the dehumanization the white race has ordered upon blacks for many years. King is attempting to show that it is unfair and daunting towards the black community to face these discriminations every day. King when mentioning discrimination, says ¨We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights . . . Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; [when you have to tell your six-year-old daughter] Funktown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people;¨(3). This quote exemplifies how blacks have been put down and beat upon for years without the ability to fight back. King detailing the constitutional and god given rights shows that blacks have been denied basic rights that our country has been structured around. The American ideology that “all men are created equal” has not applied to the black race, illustrating their denial of God-given and constitutional rights. The stinging darts of segregation is an example of blacks continuous enduring of