Essay On Martin Luther King Jr Letter From Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963 while Martin Luther King Jr. was in the Birmingham jail, he decided to write to a letter to a group of clergymen. This letter was first composed on the margins of a newspaper, then continued on scraps of writing paper. He was very disappointed because Negros aren’t being treated fairly despite laws that have granted freedom. Throughout the southern United States negroes have experienced prejudice, so Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers have been nonviolently protesting against segregation. Martin Luther King Jr. and the clergymen have different attitudes towards King’s activities in Birmingham. The clergymen claim that they agree with certain Negro leadership that has called for negotiation of racial issues. King thinks the community needs to confront the issues that have created tension. The community has constantly refused to negotiate, but now with sit-ins and marches occurring they are dramatizing the issue. The clergymen express the demonstrations of Negro citizens as unwise and untimely. King states that, the demonstrations are well-timed because they have suffered from segregation. He has been waiting many years
for segregation to end. Eventually he began to think that he has been waiting for no reason at all. The clergymen know about the convictions of protesters, and they suggest that the decisions of the courts should be peacefully obeyed.
King has been charged in the past for parading without a permit. King thinks the law is just because he knows you need a permit to parade. However, the law is unjust because as citizens they were denied the privilege of peaceful assembly and protest. One of the criticisms that the clergymen said was that the demonstrations have been handled with regards to the community as a whole. The demonstrations are viewed as violent even though they are committing acts of nonviolence. King, disagrees he knows protesters have been hurt by the police force. King says that the clergymen wouldn’t have spoken so highly of the police force if they had seen their dogs sink teeth into unarmed, nonviolent
Negros. Martin Luther King Jr. started his non-violent campaign in Birmingham the city he claimed to be the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Negroes had been treated badly in public, at the courts, and in jail. Many Negro homes and churches have been bombed in Birmingham. At one point, merchants agreed to remove humiliating racial signs. As time passed promises were broken, people began to prepare for direct action. Everyone was tired of waiting, so they began to create a situation full of tension. Martin Luther King Jr. was once charged for protesting without a permit. He understood that the ordinance requires a permit to parade. He viewed such an ordinance as unjust because it denied citizens their right to peaceful assembly and protest. To King, racial segregation is unjust because it distracts the personality of a Negro. He thought, any law that degrades a human’s personality is unjust. Civil disobedience is breaking an unjust law with the willingness to accept the consequences for the sake of freedom. The protesters were being disobedient towards racial segregation. They aroused the conscience of the community because they were harshly punished for non-violent acts.