The Cogent And Moralistic Tone Of Martin Luther King

In a cogent and moralistic tone, Martin Luther King rationalizes as he attempts to reason with the eight fellow clergymen to bring justice to the inequality in the social economic system during the 1960s in the United Sates between the colored minority and the white majority. King bears witness to the inhumane treatment to his colored brothers and sisters and intends to defend his people by appealing to the religious values of the clergyman while emphasizing on the lack of morality and the excess of inequality in America. Martin Luther King begins his letter by setting himself as equal to the other clergyman by establishing his credibility and appealing to the moral values a religious cleric may have, meanwhile explaining his purpose

Although many believe that the clergyman always do what is morally just for society, King refutes this belief as he points out the flaws in the religious positions that the clergyman take, “I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother.”. King does this purposefully to point out that church leaders should bring people together, yet these clergyman intend on bringing people apart. He cleverly accuses them of not listening to the church, but instead listening to the hateful mindset of the government. One way he does this is by mentioning how the voice of God and the church is weak. All the religious appeals he makes are to word it in a way that is relevant to the clergyman. The emotional appeals depict the cruel lifestyle that the Negroes have to live through because of the segregation. King tells stories of how policemen “push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls”, and how they “slap and kick old Negro men and young boys”. In Addition, he tells his own anecdotes of how it has affected his own little girl when he told her she couldn’t go to the park because colored people weren’t allowed and he could see the “ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to develop a bitterness toward white people”. He describes how it feels to be discriminated in hopes that the clergyman can put themselves in his shoes as he tells how it feels when “you find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored",”. All of these vivid