Letter From Birmingham Summary

In the piece “Letter from Birmingham,” Martin Luther King Jr. is writing a personal response to eight clergymen who were questioning the movement taking in place in Birmingham and how it was being handled. The clergymen believed it should have been handled in the courts and King simply disagrees. King generally would not respond to people writing him, but with him being in jail and the questions being pondered by many, he felt it was needed to write them back about the injustice being done.

King described and illustrated the struggles as a black man and a black woman during this significant time period and also wrote of his leadership roles during the civil rights movement. King’s intent was to elucidate why this so called “violent demonstration” was taking place in Birmingham. He wrote calmly that the courts had been doing nothing to stop the violence and segregation that was going on and the black

As a white clergymen, they did not understand everything that was happening around them, and King argued those points that the men believed to be true. The topics that King argued against the clergymen were, the court, demonstrations, being “outsiders”, and law enforcement support. He used examples for all subjects and appealed to a much bigger audience than just the eight clergymen.

King used this response letter to inform the clergymen what it was like to be a black man or woman in Birmingham and other places across the United States. At the end of the letter, King had hoped that clergymen would be able to read his letter. However, millions of people have now had the chance to read this and King used his own examples of segregation to appeal to an even bigger audience than ever anticipated. He had caught the attention of people by connecting emotionally with them and using logic to help them better understand how black people felt living in segregated