Appreciation Of ¡§Letter From a Birmingham Jail¡¨
Martin Luther King, one of the greatest speakers for the black civil right movement, has written many persuasive essays in his life time. One of the pieces stands out as his greatest work, ¡§Letter From a Birmingham Jail¡¨; a letter written from the jail when he was arrested for his work on civil rights on April, 1963. It is a letter that King wrote to a group of clergy members who disapproved for his movement in Birmingham. The letter consists of both religious impulse and argument that persuade people to support his work for civil rights. As for me, the most convincing part is the refutation of opposing views. King demonstrated his premises step by step and finally made his conclusion to prove his point of view. Now, I¡¦m going to explain where King does this effectively, how and why King¡¦s refutation of opposing views useful to him. In the letter from the group of clergy members, they distinguished King is an outsider. King justified himself the present in Birmingham in the second paragraph by the objections against ¡§outsiders¡¨. He told them that he was responsible and obliged to lead the nonviolent movement and stated, ¡§I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit i
One of King¡¦s most important and extended arguments was the basic principle of justice. He distinguished between just laws that we should obey, and unjust laws that we should disobey. He declared the definition of just and unjust law by stating, ¡§ One has a legal and moral responsibility to obey is just law. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey is unjust law¡¨(22). To make things become more convincing, King would agree with St. Augustine that ¡§an unjust law is no law at all¡¨.(22) This made a further development for the letter; King¡¦s definition was referred from St. Augustine ¡V an especially significant Catholic theologian. He changed from the abstract to the concrete to support his premises by giving examples of just and unjust law. ¡§An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself.¡¨(24) Not only examples, but also question to ask the clergy member back, ¡§Can any law enacted under such circumstance be considered democratically structured?(25)¡¨ Once his first conclusion was established, he immediately used a question to prove that there was unjust law in Birmingham. Having proved that the law was unjust, King was obliged to disobey segregation law in Birmingham. On the
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John Bunyan,
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¡§an unjust,
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Approximate Word count = 885
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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