Socrates Letter From A Birmingham Jail

The Two Pursuers The Apology details Socrates’ trial due to the charges of refusing to recognize the state’s gods and introducing other, new divinities and corrupting the youth. Socrates’ pupil Plato writes the speech Socrates gives during the trial directed towards his jury of five hundred. After Socrates is found guilty of the charges imposed upon him the jury then votes with a superior majority that he will pay the death penalty for his crimes. That is when Socrates tells his tale of the Two Pursuers. Throughout his entire trial Socrates never begged, cried, or broke down. He never lied, cheated, or tried to trick anyone. These tricks may have won over the sympathy from his Athenian jury but they would have compromised him as a person.

This can be exemplified in King’s words “It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.” He wrote these words after being detained for peaceful protesting the segregation occurring in the city of Birmingham. Laws or even simply ideals that one person is better than another based simply on the color of their skin, religion, or sexuality shows that even two thousand years later the faster pursuer is still beating the human race. When one believes that they are better than another they falsely feel that they are entitled to the finer things in life or that they may treat others poorly. They live an unrighteous life due to a false belief put into their heads by their parents, the media, or even society as a whole. On the other side of that same coin one can see the same thing happening to the segregated. They falsely believe they are inferior, deserving the poor treatment others give them. Being put down every day may lead some people to make unrighteous decisions such as vandalism, destruction, or even murder. The faster pursuer tears at people bending them into people they do not even