Summary Of Martin Luther King Letter From Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter to eight white clergymen in response to their public statement where they stated their concerns about the actions of the demonstrators in their city. The clergymen called King’s actions “unwise and untimely,” they considered him an outsider and an extremist; this is what grabbed King’s attention when he went to jail and saw the statement made by these clergymen, he decided that these religious men were “genuine good [willed and their] criticisms [were] sincerely set forth” (King) therefore King chose to answer their concerns in his letter. In Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail he fights for the right of civil rights by effectively using Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle and fallacies such as

King needs to give the clergymen and all his readers a reason to listen to him and show them that he is believable. To do this King tells his audience that he is the “president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every Southern state with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. [They] have eighty-five affiliate organizations all across the South, one being the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights” (King). This statement shows the audience that he has first-hand experience through the organizations he is involved with and tells the audience through this experience he sees and hear of the unjust treatment to the black citizens in the South first hand which gives the audience a reason to listen to what King has to say. Second, King effectively uses pathos from Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle and the appeal to emotions fallacy within his letter in order to further help convince his audience that his actions of peaceful demonstrations are justified in his fight for civil rights. King starts describing mobs that lynch parents, drown siblings, and policemen who brutalize and kill black

He is showing them a small part of what life as a black citizen is like. King is using the appeal to emotion fallacy as evidence in order to explain the reason his fellow demonstrators and he will no longer wait for the people to change their ways and give them their “god given rights,” and why they will instead protest until they get those rights. Another pathos and the appeal to emotion fallacy example in King’s letter is when he makes reference to the clergymen’s public statement where they applauded the policemen for keeping the peace however King states that he believes they would not applaud the policemen if they say how the police unleashed the violent dogs onto the peaceful crowd, how they treat the black citizens “inhumanly” in the city jail and would push, slap, kick and curse at the elders and young children. These examples are meant to tug at the audience’s heartstrings because no one would want their loved ones beaten by police or treated like trash because of their skin color. These examples sort of reverse the roles between whites and blacks, giving them a chance to see the world through the perspective of a black citizen to live in their slaves for a few seconds. King is trying to show his audience using his pathos and appeal to emotion fallacy examples, that if the roles were reverse the whites would do