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Racism In Martin Luther King's Letter From Birmingham Jail

Decent Essays
In, Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. response to eight white men of the religious leaders in the South, who issued a caution of his appearance in Birmingham, Alabama. For the incompetent people before him, King uses the theme of racism and examples of it. In a city where injustice happened every day to people of color, experiencing this himself, King wrote about the actions taking place. In a jail cell, detained for not having the right “permit” for protesting (King 1). The government announcing, they were in the argument of “outsiders coming in”, but in the actual sense, he was invited by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. (King 1) Also, because of the destruction that the government inflicting and the…show more content…
That event takes place every single day, he and his brothers have been fitting this war against injustice. That he is tired of waiting for the right moment to start fitting back and that they should just sit there and just watch as it happens.
“For years now I have heard the word “wait.” It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity” (King 3). But now King shows his readers through this and the security that he is ready for a new chapter where the African American people will finally rise up against the oppressors and fight for their basic rights for equality. King states,” We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. Those nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter (King 3)”. Through Ethos, he shows his readers that they can trust his credibility of the issue and he is strong on his word that there will be change.
King gets contact with the reader's emotional side with Pathos. He uses Pathos to draw the reader in and them feel the same emotions that people of color deal with. “When you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect newt, plagues with inner fears and outer resentments, when you are
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