Analysis Of Mlk Jrs Letter From Birmingham Jail Religion Essay

Analysis Of Mlk Jrs Letter From Birmingham Jail Religion essayThe Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was a time of massive unrest. While the movement was felt across the south, Birmingham, Alabama was known for its odds-on treatment of blacks and became the focus of the Civil Rights Movement. Under the leadership of Martin Luther tycoon Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, African-the Statesns in Birmingham, began daily demonstrations and sit-ins to protest difference at lunch counters and in unrestricted facilities. These demonstrations were organized to draw precaution to the seedinesss in the city. The demonstrations resulted in the arrest of protesters, including Martin Luther king. big businessman was arrested in Birmingham after winning part in a peaceful march to draw worry to the way that African-Americans were creation treated t here, their lack of voter rights, and the extreme in on the thotonice they faced in Alabama. big businessman immediately strives to justify the need for peaceful orient put through through his statement, Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. What is direct action? Direct action is a form of political activism which may include sit-ins, strikes, and demonstrations. queers explanation to the clergymen for protesting segregation began with an explanation of their actions, Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a accent that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. In this case mightiness was invoking the right of exemption of expression, non only freedom of speech but the freedom to assemble. The clergy and many of the citizens of Birmingham believed the demonstrations, sit-ins, and strikes, considered peaceful by King and his supporters, as a taunting and violation of the segregati on honors in outrank in many of the southern states.Within the first paragraphs of his letter King rebukes the many injustices of his people in Birmingham. King responded with dismay at the clergys eccentric to him being an noncitizen. King stated that he had a reason for being in Birmingham and he was not an outsider as the clergymen claimed. He responded with a profound statement, eachone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds. King explained that his usance for being in Birmingham was callable to the injustices within the city. He continued by comparing himself to the eighth nose candy prophets in that he too was carrying a message the gospel of freedom. King explicitly compared himself to the apostle Paul whose travels were extensive in spreading the gospel of Christ. undecomposed as Paul left Tarsus to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, King left Atlanta for Birmingham. He claimed that his job as a Christian mi nister was to attack injustice wherever it appeared. Kings imprisonment could to a fault be compared to the imprisonment of Paul.King answered the clergymens allegations that breaking the equity was not the way to get to the results Conversely, one has a clean-living responsibility to disobey foul integritys. I would agree with St. Augustine that, an unjust law is no law at all. King did not believe that they have broken the law. Kings response to the clergymen was that a law that is not morally sound is not a law. Kings statement supports the unprogressive theory of the Nature of Law in that law existed before man. The primordial principles of law are to distinguish between that which is right and that which is wrong. Therefore, laws are make to protect the people not degrade and punish.King defined just and unjust law as followsA just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. doubting Thomas Aquinas An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in thoroughgoing(a) law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.King wrote that a law could be just on the surface and unjust in its application. The example presumptuousness was how he had been arrested on the charge of parading without a permit. He explained that there is nobody wrong in having a law which requires a permit for a parade, but that it becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens their depression Amendment privilege.King connected the nonviolent courtly noncompliance or unjust laws to the revolutionary arguments of Thomas Jefferson. Kings writings include, law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that city block the flow of social progress. In the Declaratio n of Independence, Jefferson argued that governments exist to protect canonical human rights, deriving their just bureaus from the consent of the governed.King addressed civil disobedience, the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government or of an occupying power without resorting to physical violence, through his example of the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. Other examples of civil disobedience were incorporated into the letter. King wrote, civil disobedience was demonstrated by the betimes Christians who were willing to face lions and the chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the roman type Empire. King understood completely that his audience was not the clergymen alone. So, while benevolent to the Christian and Biblical judgments and principles of the clergy, he included non-Biblical examples of civil disobedience as well So crates and the Boston Tea Party.King responded to the clergymens accusation that he was an ultra by countering with examples of extremists. King wrote, Was not Jesus an extremist for honor come your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which spitefully use you, and persecute you. Amos was an extremist for justice, Let justice roll voltaic pile like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. He continued providing examples of otherwise extremists including the apostle Paul, Martin Luther, Abraham Lincoln, John Bunyan, and Thomas Jefferson.King was concerned with the oppression of the African American. He continued by writing of the yearning for freedom of the African American. He wrote, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great want toward the promised land of racial justice. Using the analogy of the promise land was not accidental. The promise land was the Israelites land of freedom from their enslavement at the custody of the Egyptians. King quoted Abraham Lincoln, This nation cannot survive half slave and half free, and Thomas Jefferson, We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created disturbChristianity played a major role in Kings response to the clergymen. He shared his disappointment with the church as a whole. King believed that he would find support for the cause of justice within the community of the church. He wrote of the strength of the early Christians and of their rejoicing for being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. He also wrote of the weakness of the contemporary church and the concerns he had about Christianity losing its meaning. King was so distraught over the actions of the church that he found himself asking, What patient of of people worship here? Who is their God? And, while disappointed, he responded with statements of love and hope.As King concluded his letter he shared his belief that the struggle for freedom would be won , not only in Birmingham but across the nation, because the black mans destiny was tied up with the destiny of America and the goal of America is freedom.Kings letter from the Birmingham jail inspired a theme civil rights movement. The goal was to completely end the system of segregation in every aspect of public life (stores, separate bathrooms and drinking fountains, etc.) and in job discrimination. The enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that banned discrimination found on race, color, religion, or national origin in employment practices and public accommodations, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 reinforced the guarantees of full citizenship provided under the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments. The modulation of these two acts marked the end of the Jim Crow system in the South. The integration of public facilities was swiftly implemented. With the enforcement powers of the federal government enhanced, the desegregation of public schools was also initiated .