Summary Of Letter From Birmingham Jail By Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King Jr., in his essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” writes that, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The evidence to support this assertion is not limited to King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail, but can also be found in Henry David Thoreau’s essay, “Resistance to Civil Government,” and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. In “Resistance to Civil Government,” Thoreau writes that under a government in which the majority rule, the conscience of its subjects becomes atrophied. He emphasizes this point by juxtaposing men and machine, as well as life and death. King, in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” identifies compliance with an unjust government as the cause of loss of conscience. He claims that, once one’s conscience

Specifically, he observes how segregation of the black population by the white majority, in Birmingham and beyond, had had a marked effect on many. According to King, the white “moderate” and the “complacent” Negro alike had “adjusted to segregation” and “become insensitive to the problem of the masses” (King 287). The insensitivity and “drained sense of ‘somebodiness’” which King speaks of is vaguely reminiscent of the metaphorical “machine” which Thoreau writes about (King 288). In a way, the “inexpedient” government which Thoreau described in his essay had manifested in King’s time and those affected by it had become deprived of conscience. This was an effect of the long years of oppression under white supremacy rule. However, even more than expressing his disappointment at those who had become indifferent to segregation, King “wept over the laxity of the Church” (King 290). As a minister, King “[saw] the Church as the body of Christ,” but was also keenly aware of how that body had been “blemished and scarred….through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists” (King 291). He condemned the complacency of the Church, stating that they were “too inextricably bound to the status quo” and remained silent behind the “anesthetizing security of stained glass windows” (King 290). Even more significantly, King observed that the “paralyzing

He presents John Proctor as character who opposes the injustice of the government in order to assert that challenging a corrupt authority is the only method of preventing justice everywhere from being threatened. Although the government of Salem functions as a theocracy, it is in no ways immune to the flaws of the racist government of Martin Luther King’s time. Just as the government controlled by the white majority deemed itself superior to the judgement of God, let alone the black population, the Salem court viewed itself as infallible. For example, in response to Reverend Hale’s criticism, Danforth stated that he would not permit a “floundering on [his] part,” for his voice shall not be “cracked” with “whimpering,” and even “an ocean of salt tears could not melt [his] resolutions” (Miller 136). In this statement, the confidence of Judge Danforth’s “voice” and “resolutions” juxtaposes with words connoting weakness, such as “floundering,” “cracked,” and “tears.” Danforth uses such diction to suggest that he is omnipotent and infallible; and perhaps indirectly, Danforth is equating himself with having the same authority as God. Additionally, the government of Salem promoted an extremely austere society characterized by rigid regulations and a patriarchal social class which made the town of