After a public statement written by a handful of clergymen, King released his response refuting their claim in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Martin Luther King Jr. quickly establishes ethos by addressing himself as a preacher, clergyman, brother, and as an African American man. By doing so, he is able to clearly and effectively state what he wished to accomplish —to desegregate Birmingham through persuading church leaders and members. King argues that Jesus was an extremist for love, expressing his disappointment for the church, and declaring that a man-made law should be morally justified. Through these points, King states that the bystanders of the Christian community failed God, he does this by employing historical and religious allusions …show more content…
King carefully replaces the words hate and love with injustice and justice, in order to stress the need for justice within civil rights. King compares himself to Jesus, supporting his notion for radical love but also as an extremist for civil rights. He counteracts the clergyman’s claim by employing this allusion to unveil the irony of the political choices of the Christian community they choose to follow. Love evolves to justice and hate evolves to injustice; it has become a battle of what is morally right. It is with that concept as to why King expresses his …show more content…
Thomas Aquinas this in his tenth page where “[a] just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.” and “[a]ny law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” King uses St. Thomas Aquinas’ definitions in order to explain the inhumanity of the statutes for segregation. Declaring that segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Not only that, but while the clergymen condemns the statutes, they hardly do anything about it other than treating black Americans as equal as themselves. King reminds the clergymen through his allusions, that they need to follow and enforce the morality of God, he urges them to rethink about enforcing the segregation
“ I have a dream”, said MLK in his argumentative speech. Why you ask? He is trying to fight for African American rights. The speech “I Have a Dream” by Martin Luther king Junior, is one of the speeches, trying to change the future of African Americans. This speech was presented at the Washington Monument to the public.
The Civil Rights Movement & the Black Middle Class: A Proposal In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired a generation with his "I have a Dream" speech. He said that he wanted his children to grow up in a country where they were not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Today, over a quarter century later, one looks at contemporary society and wonders how well has America lived up to this challenge. While there are certainly still problems with race relations, discrimination still exists and hate-crimes still occur, an argument can be made that American society has come a long way towards realizing King's goal.
Civil rights leader and social activist Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a world renown correspondence, Letter From Birmingham Jail, in April of 1963, during a time when segregation was at it’s peak in the South. When King was making his mark in American history, the United States was experiencing great social unrest due to the injustice towards their colored citizens, which would lead to social rights rallies and unnecessary violence. In response to King’s peaceful protesting, the white community viewed “[his] nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist,” and subsequently imprisoned the pastor (para 27). King specifically wrote to the white clergymen who had earlier addressed a letter to him as to why he was apprehended, in which they argued that his actions were untimely and unconstitutional. In response, King emphasized that justice is never timely, and the refusal to acknowledge equal rights was inhumane and regressive.
Dr. King was a strong voice for the Negroes and a champion who led them to fight against the unjust laws of segregation. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was used as a way to ask for support from the church leaders, defend himself against the criticism the church leaders had made of him, to admonish the churches to take a stand just as Christians had done in the past and to point out his reasons for not only standing with the Negro community to fight the good fight but committing to lead the people in their fight. He took his role as if called by God just as much as he was called to be a minister. In conclusion, King was right to go to the church leaders for help. If those leaders had stood with King instead of letting their
In my perspective, King’s portrayal of the church still applies to many churches today that do not stand up for the current injustices in our modern world. To begin with, King boldly writes that though he hoped for the city of Birmingham’s religious leaders to stand up for injustice, he sadly states that they did not. He writes that he “came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of [the] community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, serve as the channel through which our grievances could get to the power structure” (King 485). Instead of serving as this channel though, King details that “in the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities” (King 485).
After the eight clergymen released a public statement directed towards King’s “extreme” leadership in the Civil Rights Movement, King decided to respond in his letter. He used a variety of allusions, targeting scholars, history, and, directed closest to the audience, the bible: “Was not Jesus an extremist…” (page 269). Because the eight clergymen consider themselves men of God, King alludes to Jesus’s extremes. If the clergymen rejoice and respect Jesus’s duties as an extremist, planning to insult King’s efforts backfired: King used the slander to his advantage, building ethos of himself as a man of God. Constructing more credibility, King writes, “...just as the Apostle Paul left his village...and carried out the gospel of Jesus Christ… so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my hometown.”
King disagrees with these criticisms and goes on to explain that if he people keep delaying the fight for freedom then it will never happen. He says that black people have waited for “more than 340 years”.(King 3) Another topic that King mentions is the fact that he wants white people to uphold the law but he is fine with black people disobeying the law. He addresses this issue by comparing the difference between a just and an unjust law. A just law is a law that upholds human dignity but an unjust law is a law that hurts or oppresses. He makes a comparison to Nazi Germany where what the Germans were doing was considered “legal” and he says that he would've supported to the oppressed class had he lived there.
This makes a logical appeal between laws; the ones that apply to everyone are fair, while the ones that specifically apply to certain groups are not. With these words, King makes the readers see the process behind how he identified Birmingham’s law as unfair. To back up his thinking for his responses to unfair laws, he shares the events in history when logic almost the same as his own was used. “To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.”
Then brought up one person who wrote something to him saying that “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry.” He feels it is the duties of African Americans to work through the works of god this way they can get what they want out of life. King addresses the churches because he is disappointed in them for not taking his side. He believed that they would help them get justice and have the strength to march with them. But instead they didn’t they just choose to ignore the problems and keep their heads down.
Compelling Craft The craft of using words to create a mood or an atmosphere takes great skill to make an audience understand and feel the cause a writer is fighting for. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a civil rights activist from the 1950’s to the 1960’s, wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail. In his letter he made a compelling argument to a group of clergymen, who questioned his quest. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made his compelling argument using pathos, ethos, and Kairos by utilizing personal experiences, expressing a moral obligation to help, and his timely involvement for direct action.
MLK’s ultimate claim is that the church is to blame for these happenings and “the judgement of God is upon the Church as never before”(276). King stated how even the people who were in the church trying to fight for justice had been looked down upon and some had been kicked out of their own churches. King’s claims were passionately presented. He relentlessly provided evidence to prove his position on the issue of injustice and also showed ample amounts of examples to solve these problems.
Upon being imprisoned for marching Dr Martin Luther King wrote a letter to the fellow clergymen of Birmingham, addressing his reasons as to why he committed his “crime”, This letter was widely known as “The Letter of Birmingham”. This letter was very influential and paramount to the cause of civil rights as it spurred up future events that would play essential roles in ending racial segregation in America. Throughout his whole letter, King used Ethos, logos, and pathos to firmly get his message across while adding rhetorical devices such as repetition, metaphors, and biblical references.
In paragraphs 33 to 44 of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s response to “A Call for Unity,” a declaration by eight clergymen, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963), he expresses that despite his love for the church, he is disappointed with its lack of action regarding the Civil Rights Movement. Through powerful, emotionally-loaded diction, syntax, and figurative language, King adopts a disheartened tone later shifts into a determined tone in order to express and reflect on his disappointment with the church’s inaction and his goals for the future. King begins this section by bluntly stating that he is “greatly disappointed” (33) with the church, though he “will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen” (33). By appealing to ethos and informing the audience of his history with the church, he indicates that he is not criticizing the church for his own sake, but for the good of the church.
He dances between an iron fist of retaliation and an admirable reassurance of the patience and peace his brothers and sisters have shown; this crafts the clear message that the fight of oppression will certainly be surmounted by justice. There is also a sense of apprehension for the future of the church, stating that,”the contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo … I meet young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust”(5). King’s stance unapologetically censures the message from the church, asking if it is the true will of God.
King believed that if he could just go to Birmingham, and protest non-violently, that he could make a difference. On April 16, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. was imprisoned, in Birmingham, for protesting the civil rights of Black Americans. While in jail, he began writing a letter addressing the clergymen. His main audience in writing this letter was to the eight clergymen who criticized his actions and also the majority of the population as well. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail”, argues that injustice