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Summary Of Letter From Birmingham Jail

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On April 4, 1968, a 39 year old man was murdered. This man was Martin Luther King Jr. King spent much of his life fighting for equal rights for all people. Although everything he did was peaceful, he still ended up in bad situations. On 29 occasions, he was arrested. He also spent short amounts of time in jail. Martin Luther King Jr. effectively uses structure, metaphor and allusion to convince the recipients of his “Letter From Birmingham Jail” to fight peacefully with him. King uses structure throughout his letter to convince his correspondents to stand with him. In paragraph 8 he says, “We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.”He says this to show the clergymen he is writing to that they need to act. He doesn’t flat out say, “You need to commit yourself to this cause and take action.” He uses this same structure in many paragraphs throughout the letter. …show more content…

By using things that everyone knew of King was insuring they would understand what he meant. He is trying to say that in the past the church was in the same position as the African Americans in the South. They were seen as wrong and “disturbers of the peace” but now they sit in the background seeing everything but doing nothing and going with the majority on

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