Civil Rights Movement: Dr. Martin Luther King's Work And Life

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. one of many great influential speakers wrote a life changing letter after being arrested for peacefully protesting African American rights. While sitting in jail Dr. King received a letter from clergymen questioning his motives and timings for being in Birmingham. In a response Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. writes a “Letter from Birmingham Jail” vividly expressing physical and emotional purposes for his presence in Birmingham, AL.

Martin Luther King jr. was one of the most influential persons of the 20th Century. He is the father of the modern civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is recognized around the world as a symbol of freedom as well as peace. King practiced everything that he preached, he did not preach or speak values that he himself did not follow. He established himself as a pastor that was not afraid of hard work, guiding the middle-class congregation to public service. For example, Peake, Thomas R. author of "Martin Luther King, Jr.” states, “He encouraged his parishioners to help the needy and to be active in organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)”. I think that kings motivation

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

Dr. King was jailed for his protests, which the Alabama clergymen called “unwise and untimely.” King responded by telling of the negroes’ treatment from the past 340 years,

       Martin Luther King Jr's “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was written during his 8 day sentence in jail in 1963. He chose to travel and protest in Birmingham due to the fact that it was widely known as one of the most segregated city in the U.S. The letter not only addresses the issues of unjustly being arrested for being an "extremist" of his approach to the protest, and of the incompetence of the church but its also an appeal for things to be seen from his point of view.

Martin Luther King Jr. has been influential in multiple ways that have caused positive impacts in American society, and has gotten the attention of foreign countries to change their policies. When Martin was a child, he tried to kill himself by jumping out of his bedroom window when he had received the news of his grandmother's death. MLK’s speeches and writings guided the journey to breaking racial boundaries, desegregation and the decline of racism, enjoyed by modern generations.

King had a vision that one day all races would be treated equally. Being the educated man that he was, receiving his Doctorate from Boston University, Dr. King never saw failure as an option. King was a third generation Baptist Minister and was the Leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Dr. King was from the South and was very familiar with the city of Birmingham which was known as the most violently segregated city in the United States. An affiliate of Dr. King’s invited him to Birmingham to engage in a nonviolent protest to which he agreed. During the nonviolent protest Dr. King was arrested for protesting without a permit. While in a Birmingham County jail cell Martin Luther King explains issues within the past day’s society that needed to be addressed including the church, the white moderates, and how he had been labeled an extremist.

Dr. King was looking for support from members of society in order to create an effective change in society’s ethics. Moreover, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s large audience and public movement used nonviolent tactics, such as sit-ins, marches, and freedom rides to put the Civil Rights Movement in action. Before directly acting against the law, Dr. King had used other means to try to obtain justice for all; he used the four basic steps of a nonviolent campaign to decide how he would approach this cultural issue of racism: determination of whether injustices exist, negotiation, self-purification, and direct action (King 1). After the first three steps of his nonviolent campaign proved to be ineffective, he decided to seek direct action through a large demonstration of civil disobedience. Dr. King had a tremendous impact on the segregation issue in not just Birmingham, but the entire country, by leading the Civil Rights Movement, which eventually helped influence anti-segregation legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that affected a massive population of the entire country. Although Dr. King’s journey ended in his assassination, his relentless passion for equal rights was empowering to many and helped to create a more just society.

When he was arrested and jailed in Birmingham, Alabama he then fell under criticism by white clergy for coming to Birmingham as an “outsider” to cause trouble and increase tension through public sit-ins and marches. I feel that Martin Luther King was able to both set aside that criticism by establishing his credibility to have not only been invited to come to Birmingham to help end the injustice to the Negro people via peaceful means, but he was able to identify moral, legal and ethical cause to promote his quest to put a stop to what he identified as “the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States” (King, 2017, p, 3). I will provide a summary that will show what Martin Luther King believed were the cause of the injustice that he was striving to end to as well as his concern over the white community’s ability to make the Negro “wait for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights.”

Despite the fact that the United States victoriously abolished slavery, and roughly 620,000 lives had vanished out of existence from the Civil War in 1865, lives continued to be lost in the effort to fight for equality. Born January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, Martin Luther King Jr. was known in his day as a minister, activist, humanitarian, and most familiarly, a great leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. He became one of the most famous individuals for his contributions toward these progressive social movements that took place throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s. One could argue that one of his greatest contributions was writing “Letter From Birmingham Jail” after being arrested and thrown into the jail of Birmingham, Alabama for

Dr. King's effort to make non-violent campaign and to end racial segregation led Negroes to protest together for equal rights. Appeal of emotions in letter the King use have shown anger and sadness from broken promise and injustice law. The King clearly stated that disease of segregation will never end after all suffer, “For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”(King 275).

Martin Luther King Jr once said “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. He enforced this belief that Americans need to stand up to injustice. Even when African Americans weren’t receiving the same opportunities given to their fellow white Americans. To illustrate, some of the significant inequalities were in job income, voter turnouts, education, and societal norms. As one could imagine, quite a bit of Americans stood up against this inequality to secure a better future for the African American populations. One man in particular was named Martin Luther King Jr, who gave outstanding speeches across the United States, and gave a voice to the suffering Americans. At one of his events in Birmingham, Alabama, he decided to assemble and protest for their rights against the opposition who desired to take away their momentum on obtaining equality. Furthermore, because King decided to assemble a protest, without obtaining a permit, resulted in him ending up in the Birmingham Jail. While in jail, Martin Luther King decided to write a letter to the clergymen in one of his famous writings. During King's time in the Birmingham Jail, he refuted specifically to the clergymen’s criticism with a letter known as the Letter From Birmingham Jail to prove his actions were just and that they made an impact among the American people.

Dr. Martin Luther King wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in response to seven clergymen who misinterpreted peaceful protests by the Southern Christian Leadership. Dr. King, being the president of the Southern Christian Leadership, organized these peaceful protests for part of the black community of Alabama, which were desperate for change. King’s definitive goal for his letter to the clergymen was to explain what he, and majority of the blacks in Alabama, were experiencing. He wanted to give them insight on the actuality of the amount of oppression received by blacks from whites, including the police officers that were ultimately supposed to enforce legal equality. The clergymen claimed that Dr. King and his colleagues were outsiders that had no real business in Birmingham, Alabama. In King’s response, he counters by stating the reason for his appearance. He states that he was invited to Birmingham by the Alabama Christian Movement, on behalf of the African Americans that resided there. He went to Birmingham to confront the racial injustices that lived there. He and his associates had peaceful marches and sit-ins in order to gain the attention of the white community; however, their gatherings and protests, not approved by the city, were unpermitted, thus against the law. King acknowledges that they were breaking a law, but the fact that blacks were being so mistreated by whites caused him to make the sacrifice of disregarding that unjust law in order to gain the oppressor’s attention. He also argues that people of color should be able to have a peaceful protest, and should be supported by the rest of the community because they are protesting equality and justice. Dr. King argued that the Birmingham government failed to compromise with the African American community on rights that they were very much entitled to. After witnessing this firsthand, he acknowledged the clergymen to clarify his intentions, as well as to address the amount of obvious oppression that blacks were forced to face.

The United States was touched with discrimination, and it still is. In 1892, the Supreme Court passed a law that forced blacks and whites to sit in separate train cars, use different bathrooms, and go to different schools B1. This began segregation. In 1921 Congress also drastically restricted immigration A24 so that there would be less racial diversity. Then, in 1929, Martin Luther King Jr. was born B6. He decided that he wanted to make a difference in the fight against segregation. He led peaceful marches (meaning he didn’t use violence to show what he wanted) and eventually played an important role against segregation. Due to his and other people’s efforts, segregation was finally made illegal in schools in 1954 B2. Then, ten years later, in 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, ending segregation. Unfortunately, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot to death four years later, in 1968.

The Civil War amendments of 1865-70 gave the blacks some of these rights, but over three quarters of a century later, the American public still failed to see them as “equals”. However King recognised that he had to get to the top to change this mentality of white Americans. Through the use of the media and his own knowledge of the law in regards to civil rights, King occupied high moral and political ground, giving the civil rights movement some much needed coverage. It is argued that King was lucky in that his preaching’s and speeches were confirmed by events happening in the United States, which as a result increased peoples faith and belief in MLK.