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Summary Of Letter From Birmingham Jail

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Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail is originally intended to be a response to a statement published by eight white clergymen against the “unwise and untimely” action of King in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. He addressed the apparent injustices subjected to the Negro community in the 1960s. These include biased laws imposed on Negros promoting racial segregation. King argues, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” (para. 4). His essay contains a lot of relatable examples that were effective in persuading people to go against racial segregation.
King took his time to build his persona in the first parts of his essay, particularly in the second paragraph, stating that he is the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. This is an effective way to get the readers to believe his argument since he is also a server of the church like the eight clergymen …show more content…

His repeated expression of disappointment on how the Negro community has been treated by the white men’s unjust laws, even when they were doing a nonviolent protest, helped in intensifying the reason why they need to abolish racial segregation. Before he ends his letter, King emphasizes again, “I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends” (para. 43). It is obvious that the clergymen used their affiliation to the church to condemn King and other Negro leaders’ action to justify racism. This kind of situation still happens in the present, not only about racism but also about other kinds of

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