Summary Of Martin Luther King Letter From Birmingham Jail

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a civil rights activist who participated in many protests to fight for the rights of African Americans. King is famous for a great variety of speeches and protests. In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers organized a protest march in Birmingham, Alabama. The aggressive police force, lead by Bull Connor, arrested King and some of his followers and took them to jail. While in jail, King read a pubic letter written by Alabama clergymen about how the protests promoted by him and his followers were “unwise and untimely.” King responded to this by writing a letter in his jail cell. In his letter “Letter from Birmingham City Jail”, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. defends that the correct strategy to fight racism

In he letter, King states that “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue” (4). Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. explains that nonviolent protests bring focus upon the issue at hand and are hard to be ignored because so much tension is created. To affect his audience, King uses personal anecdotes to appeal to the emotions of the audience and to get them to agree that “only light can drive out darkness” (King). King added that “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 seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smother-ing in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society…. then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait” (5). Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. describes how he has seen many African Americans suffer from aggression and a lack of rights and explains that the African American community had to choose between suffering for many more years to come or to act on it and peacefully protest. The African American community choose to peacefully act when they did

Martin Luther King Jr. uses allusions to good extremists such as Jesus, Amos, Paul, Lincoln and Jefferson to boost his credibility and address that not all extremists are bad. In his letter, King states “Was not Jesus an extremist in love—‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.’ Was not Amos an extremist for justice—“Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ—‘I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.’ Was not Martin Luther an extremist—‘Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God.’ Was not John Bunyan an extremist—‘I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.’ Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist—‘This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.’ Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist—‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be” (10). Dr Martin Luther King Jr. alludes to these five people because they are considered extremists but worked to fight evil in the world and became very popular and loved because of this. King says that even though he is an extremist, he is not a bad extremist because he is fighting darkness with light through his peaceful protests. This allusion causes the audience to trust that King is a good person and that what he