What Is King's Allusion In Letter From Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote this letter from a jail in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. King’s wrote this letter for eight white clergymen who unapproved of his nonviolent protests for racial equality and segregation. In “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Dr. King been arrested and is writing to the clergymen about why he felt the need to be protesting also reasons why the clergymen should care. In this letter, Martin Luther King Jr. uses persuasion to show that the clergymen and the church should be ashamed of themselves for discontinuing his nonviolent protest. Throughout “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, Martin Luther King Jr. remains calm, although he is in jail for leading nonviolent protest for equality and ending segregation. King believes that if

After being arrested and imprisoned in Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote one of his most famous works to the people of Birmingham, titled “Letter From Birmingham Jail on April 16, 1963. This piece speaks of the evils of the segregation laws and how the blacks had been treated unfairly in Birmingham, in an attempt to get the white people to support the desegregation of Birmingham. He had been imprisoned because of his participation in a civil disobedience protest, and he is arguing that, even though the white people of Birmingham see the black’s way of protesting as wrong, it is a justified way to fight back against the unjust laws. In “Letter From Birmingham

The letter from Birmingham Jail was written by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a famous and influential activist during the period of Civil Rights struggle in 1960 's America, from a confinement cell in Birmingham as a response to the open letter written and published by eight white clergymen from Birmingham. In their letter, the clergymen criticized Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) for their activism, while commending the Birmingham police. Though Dr. King structures the "Letter" as a direct response to the clergymen, they are ultimately a means through which he addresses white moderates in general and society at large. The Letter reflects many of his central philosophies, including those of nonviolence, civil

Over the course of “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, the author, Martin Luther King Jr., makes extended allusions to multiple philosophers, among them Aquinas and Socrates. His comparison would seem to indicate that he shares an affinity with them. King’s work devoted to a single objective: the protection of civil disobedience as a form of protest such that the Civil Rights Movement could continue in uncompromised form. In this way, King’s letter in fact served a fourfold purpose: to establish himself as a legitimate authority in the eyes of his audience, to show the trials of the black in America, to justify his cause, and to argue the necessity of immediate action.

After analyzing Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” I have come to the conclusion that his letter was a very fitting response to the rhetorical situation. Dr. King wrote this powerful letter from his Birmingham, Alabama jail cell in response to several clergymen who criticized the protests he organized as President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He was masterful in his descriptive writing, exhibiting peaceful, yet stern and powerful influence in his words to condemn the behavior of the clergy. His words evoked emotion, as he described how his people felt, and why they were in Birmingham to stand up for desegregation in the South. In this moving letter, King was truly a master of rhetoric, for he managed to incorporate the three points of the rhetoric triangle, make them evident, and support his argument. Using logos, ethos, and pathos from the rhetoric triangle, King refuted the clergymen’s accusations and utilized their harsh points to present his own views instead. He presented his argument, used passionate rhetoric to explain the reasons they were wrong, and made the reader understand that segregation is fundamentally wrong in a society where all men are created equal.

Many barriers can evolve from people who grow up with no formal education, who only speaking their local dialect, and who have little exposure to people who are different from them. Ethnic people who can acquire a formal education, practice biculturalism, and code switch are able to be much more successful in life. It is a well-known fact that having a formal education has a major impact on a person’s earning potential and life success. Needing to understand and navigate cultures other than one’s own culture is another critical life skill. This is common thread of Dr. King, Fredrick Douglas, Amy Tan’s and myself.

Martin Luther King Jr. targets the social injustice and racial discrimination prominent specifically in Birmingham, Alabama through his Letter from Birmingham Jail to instigate nonviolent actions in detriment to the violent racism and aggression toward the African American community. Martin Luther King Jr. underlines that hopes for the abolishment of racial discrimination have been wrongfully abated in Birmingham by false expectations, and he is attempting to take leadership as an insightful outsider to fight for fundamental civil rights. Martin Luther King Jr. alludes to historical instances of insurgent civil disobedience in his Letter to appeal to ethos and establish his credibility. He also claims this racial discrimination is a shadow of the slavery in the South prior to abolition, and he appeals to logos and pathos as he underlines his indignation over this archaic mindset.

As an African American growing up in a multi-generational household I appreciated the stories my grandparents told about Martin Luther King fight for civil rights for human being; regardless of the color of your color. He is known for many speeches but one of his most profound letter called “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was written while he was sitting in solitary confinement jail cell. The foundation for the letter is to address statements made by eight white Alabama clergymen against King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) during their protesting in Birmingham. The clergymen agreed that that social injustice existed and should be handled in the judicial system rather than the streets. King took the time to address

For instance, in the letter, King uses the word “wait” repeatedly to reiterate what he and other blacks had to endure as a result of racial prejudice. To the blacks, the term “wait” practically means never. They have waited for more than three centuries; however, the problem of racism has yet to be resolved. The hope of eliminating prejudice and discrimination has become uncertain to them. In the same paragraphs, King also uses a repeated phrase of “when you” to build the emphasis on the brutality and unjustness of their circumstances. The purpose of this anaphora is to make the audience recognize all these resentments the blacks had to tolerate from injustice. In addition to repetition and anaphora, King also uses metaphor to differentiate the conditions that the blacks were living compared to situations where the whites were living. King has stated that the African Americans are living in a "horse-and-buggy pace," while the others are heading with "jetlike speed" towards the goal of political independence. This sentence typically means the blacks are still living in the early 20th centuries, the era of horses and buggies, while the whites are moving forward drastically. By employing these rhetorical devices, King made his audience fully understand their piteous situation and invoking their emotion of

King negated the clergyman 's critiques by saying that he was compelled to spread the word of freedom to others. He applied pathos to gain an anticipated emotional response from the clergyman, stating a biblical metaphor about the Apostle Paul leaving his village to carry the gospel of Christ throughout the world. King believed that he should do the same with his

He juxtaposes the high hopes he had held for the church based on its supposedly moral standing with its actual state of hypocrisy in which it worships God but turns a blind eye to racial injustice. King then emphasizes this hypocrisy using parallel structure and rhetorical questions to support his argument. By addressing the clergymen directly and using positive words like “hope”, “justice”, and “moral”, he also appeals to pathos to remind his audience of the values that the church stood for and call it to return to those values. Next, King alludes to the early church to show the church’s “powerful” beginnings. He uses a metaphor comparing the early church to a thermostat instead of a thermometer, emphasizing the active role the church must take in standing up for its beliefs and influencing society. By referring to the early Christians as “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators”, King links himself to them, increasing his credibility, and rebukes the clergymen for criticizing him using similar terms. He also explains that the early Christians “pressed on” despite resistance from society because they were “called to obey God rather than men”, further connecting his work with God’s will and implying that anyone who challenged him was challenging God Himself. King then continues to describe the present state of the church. He juxtapositions the strength of the early church with the weakness of the contemporary church and uses negative words like “weak”, “ineffective”, and “uncertain” to show his audience how the church has degraded from its original status. King’s subsequent declaration that the “judgment of God is upon the church as never before” invokes the authority of God to evoke a sense of fear from his audience, thus appealing to pathos. He supports his claim with a cause-and-effect statement that appeals to logos

“Letter from Birmingham Jail” By Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is still remembered today as one of the greatest letters ever written. This letter was penned on April 16, 1963 by Dr. King, as a response to the clergymen who opposed his nonviolent campaigns in Birmingham, Alabama. The clergymen had recently wrote “A Call for Unity” to express their opinions on what was going on in the town. They did not approve of how Dr. King was handling the situation in Birmingham. Dr. King wrote this letter while sitting in a jail cell, in order to defend his reason for his marching in the peaceful protests that occurred in the previous days. He outlined the reason behind his penning this letter and what steps were taken

Dr. King wrote “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” when he was in jail for holding a desegregation protest in Birmingham, Alabama in April, 1963. As a leader of the civil-right movement, Dr. King found that it was an urgent need to take action in Birmingham where the worse segregation and racism brutality happened. However, Dr. King was criticized by eight clergymen that the protest was an extreme action. The letter was the response from Dr. King to their criticism. This essay will briefly summarizes what the letter was about, then discusses about the main arguments in the letter and why Dr. King’s fighting process was remarkably a great lesson to learn from.

Martin Luther King was a very important person in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Dr. King among many others was a true Civil Rights activist. Dr. King is also known for his famous “I have a dream” speech. King was also known for a letter he wrote while confined in prison. Dr. King’s letter titled, “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, was written in the 1960s. The letter is written in response to the criticism of eight white clergy men. This letter has been found important throughout history because it expresses King’s feelings toward the unjust events and it is an example of a well-written argument. Most importantly, this letter explains current events in Birmingham in 1963 as well as in the rest of America and it demonstrates the approach Reverend King took throughout the whole civil-rights movement of 1950s and 1960s.

Martin Luther King Jr. the leader of the civil rights movement gave his last public speech on April third, nineteen sixty-eight, at the Mason Temple in Memphis Tennessee (King 1). Earlier that week, a planned nonviolent march escalated to rioting and resulted in the death of a man (King’s). Through his use of repetition and biblical allusions, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminds the people of the civil rights movement to remain united in nonviolent protest. Through his use of repetition, Martin Luther King Jr. conveys the effectiveness of unified, nonviolent protest. King employs the use of repetition in the phrase “when the slaves get together” (King 2).