Letter From Birmingham Jail Rhetorical Analysis

Martin Luther King Jr., activist and leader, in his letter, Letter from Birmingham Jail, argued and emphasized why nonviolent direct action was not extreme when it came to dealing with racial tension in Alabama.  His letter was a well written and well thought out response to the clergymen's statement, Call to Unity, a statement that claimed that nonviolent direct action was extreme.  King’s purpose for writing his response was to persuade his audience, the clergymen/white moderates, that their thoughts on how he approached and handled racial tension were ill-judged.  He successfully got his point across in his response by using rhetorical modes of Logos, Ethos, and Pathos using biblical comparisons, explanations about his cause, and personal stories.

First, in the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s purpose is to show his fellow clergymen true imagery of how racism and segregation is affecting the citizens of Birmingham. Dr. King states, “There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this

seems to address the entire country and whoever reads the letter, instead of his main audience who are the eight white clergymen. This letter was written to certainly impact anyone who read it and to persuade people and the clergymen to take effect. Throughout “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Martin Luther King Jr. remains calm, although he is in jail for leading a nonviolent protest for equality and ending segregation. His tone is urgent but remains gentle. King remains stern and speaks about his cause and what he believes in. King's main themes of “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is justice and action. Martin Luther King does a great job convincing his audience that justice was lacking, and action needs to occur. When reading the letter, the reader is convinced King presents a very effective and persuasive argument. King tries to convince his readers that the time to act is now. Dr. King uses a lot of ethos in his letter by using his audiences’ morals and ethics and evidence that supports his argument to convince the clergymen and people reading that segregation is wrong and the matter needs to be addressed. Dr. King also uses pathos, emotion, to try to appeal to his audience to make his letter more effective. Some examples of pathos throughout the letter where Dr. King tells about elderly African Americans being mistreated, imprisoned people being mistreated, King also uses his young child's bitterness toward

       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.

King transcends both the context of present struggle and his listeners. Unlike them, he mk understands the historical situation… he instructs them in the grand strategy of the mmmp Birmingham movement, just as any kindly teacher might attempt to cure the ignorance mmm and elevate the understanding of novice students (Osborn 28). Martin Luther King, Jr. is an expert on the struggle and obviously had the best intentions of his readers in mind while writing. This makes him both reliable and personally involved in spreading the campaign. In his “Letter,” Mr. King refuses to be put in a box, despite the location of his composition. He represents himself as a moral compass; righteous without being arrogant. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s tone and expression are an extravagant part of the letter’s ‘persuasive appeal’ (Leff, Utley 39). Mr. King himself plays an impressive part in making “Letter From Birmingham Jail” extremely effective.

Throughout the 1950's and 1960's in the United States, there was a lot of tension and strain on the black community who were trying to fight for their civil rights as citizens. Martin Luther King Jr. proved to be a major protagonist in the fight for civil rights along joined by African Americans and sometimes, white people. When the community began to commence a peaceful protest movement, it was deemed extreme. To get his point across, Martin Luther King Jr used a combination of ethos, pathos, and logos in a letter, "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" from his time spent in a jail cell. King would use people's emotional conflicts for his cause, awaken people's faith, and providing a sense of reason and logic to motivate a plea for help as his fought for a change regardless if he was known as an extremist or not.

In “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Junior uses logos and allusion to persuade the reader on the values of civil disobedience. A prime example of logos in this text is, “An unjust law is a code inflicted upon a minority which that minority had no part in enacting or creating because they did not have the unhampered right to vote(MLK, 13).” This example of logos shows the reasoning for civil disobedience and why people act upon it. For a minority to be targeted by a law that they had no part in is intolerable. The primary value for civil disobedience is equality. For a country to have a law against a minority is against the beliefs and values of civil disobedience. “There are just and there are unjust laws… An unjust law is

Writing from the heart, expressing feelings, having a strong emotional impact on ones audience, using an appeal to emotion and logic, using facts and presenting arguments in a professional way, to the enlightenment of one's viewers; Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail; consists of three Rhetorical Strategies throughout his letter that is known and taught around the world as ETHOS, PATHOS and LOGOS. An appeal to ethics, a means of convincing someone of the character or credibility of the persuader (ethos), an appeal to emotion, and a way of convincing an audience of an argument by creating an emotional response (Pathos), and finally, an appeal to logic, and is a way of persuading an audience by reason (Logos); these three Rhetorical Strategies are used countless times throughout Martin Luther King’s Letter for Birmingham Jail.

In Martin Luther King Jr.’s, “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, Mr. King writes to the Clergymen from Birmingham Prison and establishes credibility on the subject of racial discrimination and discusses all the injustice that is going on during this time. King sends out the message that they are no better than he is by starting off his letter with “My Dear Fellow Clergymen”, which puts him at the same level as all clergyman. He puts himself out to be a legitimated authority in the eyes of the people, by speaking of the intolerable acts being put on all black people to be able to justify his cause. Martin Luther King uses ethos to establish all his credibility on the matter that he is trying to get across, that justice cannot be waited on and that

Martin Luther King Jr. was an African-American Baptist minister who became the most well-known civil rights activist and leader. King Jr. strongly believed in peaceful protest, choosing to use silent rebellion in favor of violence. During a trip to Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, for a Christian Leadership Conference, King was jailed during a peaceful protest for the treatment of blacks. While in jail, King wrote a letter to fellow clergymen. In his “Letter from Birmingham City Jail”, Martin Luther King Jr. used several techniques to appeal to and effectively persuade the white clergymen he was writing to regarding segregation. King clearly displays the peacefulness of his protest, the unfairness of unjustified prejudice against blacks, and reveals examples of brutality against blacks.

During civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.’s incarceration, he received a letter from his fellow Alabama Clergymen expressing their concerns about appealing to law and order and common sense. Because he had a lot of time on his hands, as stated at the end of his response, he wrote a quite long and elaborate letter. In this letter, King justified himself from the arguments made by the clergy communicating his thoughts both passionately and conveying confidence. They accuse him of being an outsider utilizing hatred and violence in an “unwise and untimely” manner. He defends his position on nonviolent direct action addressing not only the 8 clergymen but any apathetic persons in the United States.

Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was written as a counter-argument to the clergyman’s letter towards black activists engaging in protests, which the considered extreme and untimely. King’s

While Martin Luther King Jr. was locked up in a jail he received a letter from eight clergymen. They reached out to King in a letter that is called “A Call for Unity.” In this letter, they are telling king that people needed to stand up and try to make a change by peaceful protesting to get their point across (“A Call for Unity”). King then replies to their letter with a letter of his own which is known as “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” King states that he gets a lot of letters and doesn’t reply to them but he thought that the clergymen meant good so he would try to answer their questions to the best of his ability (King). Also in the letter, he focuses on what is going on in Birmingham at the time and tells about himself and how he oversaw a lot of planning comities (King). In the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” King uses three main ways to connect with the audience of the letter and those are ethos, pathos, and logos.

In Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter, he had a lot on his mind while sitting in Birmingham’s jail. He usually did not answer to the questioning and criticism of his ideas; however, he decided to give his reasoning for his actions in Birmingham. King states that Birmingham has injustice; while others may sit around and watch, he believes that if injustice is in one place it affects everywhere and everyone. Waiting for their Constitutional rights, black people were getting beaten and harassed every day. As he watched all of this happen, he noticed a huge gap between a law being just and unjust. Many people will alter these laws to where a law is unjust in its purpose. King reverts back to the past when civil disobedience is not new; it has shown up for years against Jews, Romans, and Communists. He concludes that he is not afraid and that African Americans will reach their goal of freedom all over the nation. After reading Martin Luther King Jr.’s, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” he uses effective logos, pathos, and ethos to persuade the nation to fight for justice.

Although Dr. King wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail with an intent to demonstrate a nonviolent approach to social injustice, he conveyed a more deeper meaning of acceptance which he sought to emphasize on others. Through his writing, King portrayed many topics that were controversial and socially uncomfortable. For example, King wrote about the death of many African Americans in Birmingham at the hand of white citizens. He states, “Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States” and then goes on to add “There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches…” This is obviously a socially uncomfortable topic because it involves the death of a group of people by another group of people based on their opinions. This example highlighted the racial tension that existed in Birmingham during King’s time and by including this issue on the