Nonviolent Tension In King's 'Letter From Birmingham City Jail'

In order to achieve true freedom one must discover that you can break unjust laws through peaceful protest. In “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and “The Speech at The March Washington” by Josephine Baker each article passionately argues about the disadvantages of the black community, the equality and power of education. We must learn to act with patients and not guns we must protect are self’s with a pen and paper not violence. Dr. King once4 said “Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. It is unique in history which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals”.

Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” addresses criticism from clergymen. King expresses his belief that his actions during the Human Right Movement were not “untimely,” and that he is not an “outsider.”(1) King’s purpose is to inform them of his reason for being there and why he believes that although there may never be a proper time to change society, he is tired of it happening to his people. He adopts an optimistic tone in hopes that he can convince the people of Birmingham to give everyone their Human Rights that they deserve. By appealing to the mass population, King can effectively communicate to his argument by emphasizing his validation for being in Birmingham, the need for justice, and his peaceful movement.

The “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr. is about the unfair, brutal, and racist treatment the black community has been receiving from white people. This letter was written when he was arrested after peacefully protesting about segregation and how the black people didn’t agree with the law. In the letter, Martin Luther King Jr.’s feelings are being expressed toward the unfair events and it is an example of a well-written argument. In the letter are three claims pointed from King, it states he has a valid reason for being in Birmingham, the black community has no alternative, but to demonstrate and the need for justice is urgent. Also, it discusses king’s intentions during the civil rights movements. For example, this letter includes Birmingham’s thrive and the struggle the black community went through.

Imagine a person takes your phone and starts going through your photos, messages, notes, and emails. People have private information in their cell phones which they don’t want people to look at. Law enforcements today are taking phones and search them without a warrant when they are arrested. The federal government is able to know where you are located just by easily tracking your phone. There are people who think it’s a great idea because police and catch criminals easier. In the other hand people think it is invading our privacy.

In this letter, King explains the importance and the planning of the Birmingham demonstration. King illustrates this when he faces the criticism of his demonstrations as “unwise and untimely” (King 1). He shares key features to his anti-violence movement: “determining whether injustices exist, negotiation, self-purification, and direct action” (King 1). With the help of these four steps, he justifies the need for the demonstration. King illustrates the city of Birmingham as “the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States,” (King 2). Here King is able to show that injustices are present in Birmingham, which further justifies his reason for a peaceful demonstration. King proceeds to speak about his method of protesting. He states that negotiation was not met, and that “[their] hopes had been blasted,” that like “victims of a broken promise,” their wishes had been disregarded, (King 2). Even though this was the case, the other

In “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Martin Luther King defends the protestors’ thirst for justice by demonstrating the unjust society they live in. Over fifty years after the letter was written, it is still read today. Often times it gives people a sense of identity. However this letter gives me more than an identity. This letter gives me reason and motivation to always fight for a just society. We live in a world with currently many conflicts from the racial disparity in high incarceration rates to gun violence and the war over gun rights. In his letter, King describes that Black Americans have no identity and that the oppressed cannot remain oppressed forever. King implies that they cannot be told to “wait for justice” because if they simply

King also wrote on the purpose of direct action. He relied heavily on the warrant that successful negotiation was a good thing to support his claims that direct action was necessary. He needs this warrant to be strong because he does not have many facts to provide support and thus his support mostly consists of emotional appeals to the warrant. Everybody involved between him and his intended audience want successful negotiation and he uses that to effectively push his argument forward. He also leaned on his stated warrant that direct action resulted in negotiation thereby linking back to the previous warrant to support the emotional aspect of his argument. He stated “You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action.” He argued that direct action forced productive negotiation by forcing constructive tension. While he argued strongly against violent actions he felt that tension was vitally important to successful negotiations. He argued the right kind of tension would provide the required force to push through successful negotiation to fix the problems that plagued the

In modern-day life people often have their ups and downs of having power and losing it all. This is a key element in life, which is why many art forms choose to use it as their basis of writing. Literature often shows power and powerlessness through heroes and villains. However, author James Baldwin brings the battle of having and losing power through ordinary people’s life experiences. In the short story, Sonny’s Blues, written by James Baldwin examines the idea of how the desire to have power or control leads to having no power at all through the plot, characters, and setting.

In 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. was sent to jail because of a peaceful protest, protesting treatments of blacks in Birmingham. Before the protest a court ordered that protests couldn’t be held in Birmingham. While being held in Birmingham, King wrote what came to be known as the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Not even King himself could predict how much of an impact this letter would have on the Civil Rights Movement. In the letter kind defended Kings beliefs on Nonviolent Protests, King also counters the accusations of him breaking laws by categorizing segregation laws into just and unjust laws. King uses this principle to help persuade others to join him in his acts of civil disobedience.

The Civil rights movement was a long and hard fight for freedom in our nation. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the many people who devoted themselves and fought for the movement. He did it in hope to make the world a better place. Outraged and indignant, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham city jail” addresses the events that took place in the name of freedom. Martin Luther King Jr. reflects on the events, through his use of tone, rhetorical appeals, and rhetorical tools.

Martin Luther King Jr. is a name that will never be forgotten, and that will go down in the books for all of time. He was foremost a civil rights activist throughout the 1950s and 1960s. during his lifetime, which lasted from January of 1929 to April of 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and a social activist and was known for his non- violent protests. He believed that all people, no matter the color, have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws and to take a direct action rather than waiting forever for justice to come through and finally be resolved.

Since the beginning of the human existence, man has always dominated and ruled over one another be it empires, corporations, or small groups. Authority and obedience has always been a factor of who we are. This natural occurrence can be seen clearly through the psychological experiments known as The Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Both of these studies are based on how human beings react to authority figures and what their obedience is when faced with conflict.

Anything is a double-edged sword and so does obedience. Obedience has many functions. Submissiveness to a authentic leader is indispensable to win a war, and also, it provides stability for a country. From another point of view, it will lead to chaos and confusions in an institution without obedience. On the contrary, submission also has some limitations. When people are instructed, they have capacities to do evil and blind obedience sometimes leads to disasters.

The third argument King has in favour of nonviolent resistance is in how it creates a stage for oppressed groups to speak their truths. King views nonviolent resistance as the only morally sound method in addressing these issues. When reading this, I found it to be slightly unclear, however, I have concluded that it is because hate breeds hate, which is why a different approach is needed being nonviolent resistance. This would prove to be a powerful movement, but frustrating as one must expect to face various forms of violence but stay in a state of peace within oneself. In intentionally placing oneself in violent scenarios and not having to endure extreme mistreatment in attempt to address another. These three arguments are some of the benefits that King touches on as to how it led him to his dedication to nonviolent resistance and realistic pacifism. Through Kings search for a philosophical perspective, he faced some objections of nonviolent resistance, which ended up strengthening his belief in the

He does this by using lines such as “When you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim”. By using this kind of incendiary language and sentence structure he lets the audience envision how horrible it would be to see this happening to you or your own friends. Through the emotions he provokes, King is able to pursue the reader to hear what he has to say about these outrage of acts. King asserts negotiation is the best way to resolve problems, but when it was not an option on the table, he obliges to confront injustices using nonviolent direct action. He emphasized “the purpose of the direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. We, therefore, concur with you in your call for negotiation” (11). In addition, he explains that current attempts to confront the issue of prejudice in Birmingham remain unsuccessful and that it is “...necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis…” (11). This leads the way to King gaining the audience’s undivided attention and paving the way for him to in more detail explain the logic behind why prejudice is unjust and