TOW #15 – Letter From a Birmingham Jail by MLK

In 1962 Birmingham, Alabama was one of the most segregated cities in all of America. Their mayor, Eugene ‘Bull’ Conner was a segregationist known for his hostile and mostly violent treatment towards African Americans. Between the years of 1957 and 1962 seventeen African American churches and homes were bombed, including the home of Fred Shuttlesworth, an avid civil rights campaigner. Later in March of 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy decided to do something about Birmingham. They set up a headquarters and began to recruit volunteers for protest rallies, they promoted nonviolent techniques. It began with lunch-counter sit-ins and then marches. During one march King was arrested and put in solitary confinement. He spent eight days in jail and ended up composing ‘A Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ in response to a letter recently published in a local newspaper that called the protests ‘unwise and untimely’.

                King directly address his letter to ‘Fellow clergymen’ however they are not his actual audience. Instead, his audience is the universal man, King just filters it through the clergymen. His letter is meant for specifically white men, the ones who don’t understand why he protests and the ones who understand but refuse to support. King wants the ones who don’t understand to finally understand and the ones that do understand to help with the movement.

                To address the white men who don’t understand he attempts to at first justify his actions of protest. He emphasizes throughout how he promotes nonviolence against the violence that is being committed towards him and fellow African Americans. To prevent his audience from arguing that what he’s doing is wrong King alludes to secular thinkers and the Bible. He wants them to realize that ultimately he is trying to do the same thing that the thinkers and even Jesus were trying to do so what he’s doing can’t be immoral because for these other people it was moral.

                When talking to the ‘white moderates’ King undertakes a more logical route. He gives them the real raw reason behind the protests, oppression. He tries to explain to them that these protests are unavoidable, that all this ‘pent up resentments and latent frustrations’ must be released. He again tries to emphasize the nonviolent aspect of his protests because he feels that violence is a big point that could be used against him. King also compares himself to secular thinkers and Jesus again to continue to point out that what he Is doing is exactly what his audience has praised before.

                I don’t think King really achieved his purpose. Mainly because of the time period and the attitude of his audience, I feel as if they weren’t that accepting to his argument as he would have wished.