Jim Crow Laws: Cause And Effect To Protest Against Unjust Laws

Martin Luther King Jr. was an American baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights Movement in 1954. He had a great impact on race relations in the U.S. and he made a great impact on many lives. He died in 1968. Dr. King wrote 2 famous works, “Dream” and “Birmingham” and each had a different audience and purpose. Both works utilizes the persuasive techniques of pathos in “Dream” and logos in “Birmingham.”

Martin Luther King Jr. says he shouldn’t pay attention criticism or he and his secretaries wouldn’t get any work done. Although, he feels like he must explain why he did what he in Birmingham because people were being persuaded to the reasoning of the “outsiders coming in. ”King argues that you can never be an outsider if you live in the United States, because you must know your rights to protect to them. MLK was serving as president of Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The Birmingham branch of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference invited MLK to participate in the direct-action program if needed.

Throughout the history of society, civil disobedience has become a key tool in combating laws seen as unjust. It was used thoroughly in the civil rights movement and was integral to the advancement of equality. The reason that civil disobedience plays such an important role in the advancement of rights is because of how effective it has been. The best way to make people aware of and relate to a movement is to make it well known. Events such as Bloody Sunday and the Montgomery Bus Boycott helped the civil rights movement gain much of the momentum that guaranteed its success.

Civil rights was the most important reform during 1945 and 1980. The civil rights movement was a movement fighting for African-Americans equality, privileges, and rights. The Movement was centered around the injustice of African -Americans in the South. African American faced racial inequality, lack of economic opportunity, and unfairness in the political and legal processes. In the late 19th century, state and local governments imposed restrictions on voting qualifications which left the African community economically and politically powerless and passed segregation laws, known as Jim Crow laws.

The anti-lynching movement was a civil rights movement in the United States that aimed to eradicate the practice of lynching. Lynching was used as a tool to repress African Americans. The anti-lynching movement reached its height between the 1890s and 1930s. On President Abraham Lincoln's birthdate in 1909, Ida Wells and W.E.B. DuBois helped organized the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in response to the lynchings of African Americans. In 1919, the organization published Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States: 1889–1919 to call attention to the issue.

Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”: Just and Unjust Laws Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is a letter to eight white clergymen while he’s sitting in a jail cell, the result of a protest in Birmingham, Alabama that King, a Georgian, traveled to attend. Due to the criticisms of the clergymen, he commences his letter by explaining why he needed to come to Birmingham. King states that he was there for a multitude of reasons, the first being that he had organizational ties to Birmingham, the second being that he was there because there was injustice in Birmingham. He states that as a citizen of America, injustice in Birmingham is not removed from justice anywhere else because everything is interrelated, and that injustice

“The civil rights movement was based on faith. Many of us who were participants in this movement saw our involvement as an extension of our faith. We saw ourselves doing the work of the Almighty. Segregation and racial discrimination were not in keeping with our faith, so we had to do something.” -- John Lewis

In the South, the blacks had not exactly won their freedom. Sure the Constitution was amended, but this didn 't mean they would get that kind of freedom. I can totally relate to the Blacks back in the day, how hard they had to go through because of some very evil people who think they just can control anything they want. Me as a human being and a nice person would never use someone against their will because I have a little of what they call power. The Blacks were force to work for farm owners for almost something that didn’t even exist, so I guess you can say they worked for free.

The Jim Crow laws claimed to be “Separate but equal”, they were anything but. The laws separated the blacks from the whites. They had separate stores, schools, and even drinking fountains. The Jim Crow laws separated the blacks from the whites, made life harder for the blacks, and when they were separated their stores, restaurants, and other things were not equal.

Our society has been subject to different forms of injustice for hundreds of years, such as slavery followed by decades segregation and discrimination. Discrimination is a common thread in the United States throughout the years, and even though slavery has ended, discrimination continues today in many forms. People who have felt discriminated against have responded in many ways from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s to the Black Lives Matter movement of today. Los Angeles in the 1990s was still a place of segregation that led to discrimination and racial tension. The Los Angeles riots (or the Rodney King riots) in 1992, were another painful but eye opening event in the long fight for justice.

Martin Luther King’s utilization of pathos and rhetorical questions in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” allows him to adequately advocate for civil rights for African Americans. MLK’s convincing use of pathos is shown in paragraph 23, where he wrote, “If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail.” This quote was intended to make the white bishops who he was responding to feel guilty, as slavery was perpetrated by some of their ancestors. Furthermore, this quote shows the general enthusiasm of African Americans and affiliates to push for the repealing of unfair laws of segregation. This is shown by African Americans being able to persevere through slavery and that segregationist laws