Parallelism In Letter To Birmingham Jail

Prior to the mid 20th century, social injustice, by means of the Jim Crow laws, gave way to a disparity in the treatment of minorities, especially African Americans, when compared to Caucasians. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., along with many other civil activist, began a campaign to change the laws and the social attitudes that caused such a disparity. Although Dr. King’s exploits are revered today, he had opponents that disagreed with the tactics he employed. Letter to Birmingham Jail is a response to a group of Birmingham ministers who voiced negative comments and questioned the civil rights demonstrations Dr. King was leading in Birmingham. In order to properly convey his response to the questions proposed by the religious leaders of Birmingham,
Dr. King uses it to draw comparisons which magnifies an idea, but it also commends one and disparages the other. One example of parallelism he uses is, “But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity…” (Barnet and Bedau 741). Dr. King repeats the same starting words “when you have seen” with different examples of injustices. This use of parallelism draws on the emotions of personal experiences to persuade that segregation is a problem in a myriad of ways. Later in the letter, parallelism is used to contrast just laws and unjust laws. “The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws … Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust”(Barnet and Bedau 742). Saying it that way magnifies the imperative difference between the two types of laws. Dr. King goes on to say that laws that do not match what the Bible says are unjust. Laws should build up society to be better so that a law is not need to be enforced and people will still follow it. Another instance of parallelism in the letter is, “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people”(Barnet and Bedau 745). That sentence magnifies the fact that good people doing nothing is the same as bad people purposely hindering civil rights. Magnifying the differences between two things and repeating statements with similar structure brings about emotion to realize the wrongness of the injustice of civil