Summary Of Martin Luther King Letter From Birmingham Jail

One of the most famous documents in American writing is the 1963 letter written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from his jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a civil rights activist and the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In addition to the many organizations Dr. King was the leader of, he devoted his life to desegregating the South. On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize because of his efforts trying to desegregate the South by using nonviolent protests. King was fed up with the way he and the black community were treated so he turned to peaceful protesting. King was in Birmingham because injustice was prominent. King was arrested on April 16, 1963. for ignoring an injunction by the government. During King’s time in jail, which was for eight days, he wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” His letter was written to justify his actions and to defend his acts of nonviolent protests. In Dr.

King describes segregation as a disease because he wanted to put emphasis on how terrible segregation is. A disease is a sickness that spreads, and the only way to make the disease stop spreading is to stop it completely. Segregation is the same way; segregation will continue to spread and will continue to get worse until someone puts a stop to segregation. Another example of a metaphor is “[W]hen you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of affluent society . . . (14).” King compares poverty to an airtight cage because they are very alike; poverty was very hard to escape from in the 1960’s. People say poverty felt as like as if someone was in a airtight cage with no way to get