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Page, Joshua
9 | 15 | 2014
Prof. Paxon
Summary Essay
"Letter from a Birmingham Jail"
The "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" was written my Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in the middle of the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1960s. Martin Luther King was a civil rights activist that spent his days participating in speeches, and organizing non-violent demonstrations in public venues to convey his message about the so-claimed "abolished slavery," in the southern states. MLK was forbidden to establish more demonstrations after being involved in a non-violent demonstration, which ended up with forty-five protestors arrested, and a young boy mauled by a police dog. After, King had rejected to call off the demonstrations that he was convicted, arrested, and jailed for. Now in jail, King had read an article from a local newspaper agency, acknowledging the events that had taken place in Birmingham.
This sparked his interest enough to write a strongly worded letter to correct the Clergymen on the true order of events that had occurred on April 6th and 7th, as well as to why he was jailed.
MLK proceeds with a formal greeting, to ascertain the fact that both he, and the Clergymen are all equals, using the words "My Dear Fellow Clergymen."(King 584) King briefly reviews what the Clergymen have written in their ad, and then continues with his conjecture.
His argument starts by stating the wrongdoings happening within the city, and how he is not able to sit idle while the injustice occurs in the city of Birmingham. King weighs the city's actions based on other cities that have the same problem, claiming that Birmingham is one of the worst offenders of the "plague" (King 585) called slavery.
For about half of the rest...