Summary Of Letter From Birmingham Jail By Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King was a Civil Rights activist. He spoke on behalf of millions of African-Americans around the nation in search of a complete freedom. He spoke on behalf of African-Americans who wanted to sit in the same place as their white peers, speak without getting that glare only a white supremacist could give when in the presence of a minority, have laws that protected them like the laws that protected the majority did. In his marches, and public papers and letters, King spoke of theses injustices. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, King describes just and unjust laws. In his letter he defines, describes, and explains just and unjust laws and how they affect equality in a nation. In Martin Luther King's’ Letter from Birmingham Jail, he goes to great lengths to define unjust and just laws in the USA. In his letter King gives different definitions for a just and unjust law one of the first coming from St. Augustine that “ An unjust law is no law at all.” King provides further explanation of this quote by formally defining a just law as a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God and an unjust law as a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. In short, a just law is for everyone in a nation while an unjust law only applies to a select

King explains why some laws are unjust. During the Civil Rights Movement, the oppressors made it their goal to degrade and in a sense humiliate the minority they were oppressing. For example, King asserts that segregation, a system put in place by the oppressors, in all forms are unjust because “segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.” He also asserts that it “gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.” King is saying that theses unjust laws are put in place so the oppressor can have control on the group they are oppressing and be able to back up through the law why what they’re doing is okay under the