Letter from Birmingham Jail Analysis Essay

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“Letter From Birmingham Jail” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” after an unjust proposal made by eight white clergymen. Their claims were to be that no Negro “outsider” should be allowed to establish or lead any protest and should leave them to their local neighborhoods. King replied directly to the clergymen, but used religious ties to also have his voice heard in the public. In his counter argument, King strategically used logical evidence, emotional aspects and good motives to present his perspective to the clergymen. In the beginning paragraphs, King states the main goals of his letter. He then goes on to set up the main points of his argument by stating, “You deplore the demonstrations taking …show more content…
The repetition of the words “when you,” begins as statements of what blacks have had to endure, but slowly builds up onto the readers emotions making them realize the vastness to what blacks have really gone through. King also shows how a child’s uncorrupted minds can be possessed into hatred towards the white people, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?” Feelings as a child can build up through their lifetime, just as “when the cup of endurance runs over.” These emotional appeals brought into perspective how the simple Negro demonstrations were nothing compared to what they have had to endure while waiting, and that it was time for the waiting for finally end. At the end of his letter, King shows his ability to ask for forgiveness from the clergymen if anything he had written offended their beliefs. By doing this, King is stepping up above the two groups differences in demonstrating that he is not writing this letter in order to humiliate, but rather to help share his beliefs in the hope that they too could understand why the civil disobedience's were necessary. The way King hopes to be able to meet each clergyman as a friend displays his deep wanting for desegregation to be fully established. Good intentions towards both whites and blacks were used to wrap up Kings letter in a way to show that both can live harmoniously together. The uses of logical references,
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