Why We Can’t Wait, a book written by Martin Luther King, Jr. explains how Dr. King used nonviolent strategy to struggle against the continuing segregation of African Americans and the violence of their civil rights in Birmingham, Alabama. As indicated in the book, even though the first Emancipation Proclamation was written in 1862 and the desegregation of schools was announced in 1954, African Americans were experiencing the discrimination in all sectors. The declaration of various laws that verbally states the ending of slavery did not help colored people to go out of the segregated zone. This trend of formulating laws without no positive outcome is also practiced nowadays. It is when laws are enforced and implemented that they can bring …show more content…
Afterwards all these years of waiting, nonviolent action was used by the African Americans to protest injustice in 1963. As Fred Shuttlesworth, the organizer of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, once said “You have to be prepared to die before you can began to live.” During the Civil Rights Movement, African American adults, young people, women, and kids protested to end injustice not only for colored people but also for all the nation knowing that they are going to be killed and injured. From reading this book, I realized how dedication is needed to make a change no matter the consequences of once commitment brings.
Reading Why We Can’t Wait gives me the detailed historical explanation during the Civil Rights Movement in 1963. The fact that the book keeps its flow and tracks the African American history timeline helps me to understand each historical events in order. In addition to black people’s commitment, from their nonviolent way of demonstration, I learned that love and peace are the effective weapons to fight against the system and bring freedom to the whole