, a Baptist minister as well as a social activist, played a key role in the American civil rights movement, promoting peaceful protesting. In the selections "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King Jr. and "Ballad of Birmingham Jail" by Dudley Randall, these authors identified the hardships the black community were forced to endure, and the sacrifices they committed in an effort to overturn unjust laws. Therefore, after analyzing the above works, one can infer that the subject matter of the deprivation of racial justice is explicated with the aide of rhetorical devices such as allusion and parallelism. .
Martin Luther King Jr. participated in a non-violent protest in an effort to bring racial injustice to light. Shortly after, King was accused for being "unlawful," thus being convicted by eight white religious leaders of the South. During his imprisonment, he wrote an extended letter as a response to his social concern of unjust laws implicated on the black community. In his letter, King states, "Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried 'thus saith the Lord' far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village [.] and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ [.] I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid" (King Jr. 1146-1148). With this allusion, King developed a passing reference to recognized historical figures and implicated a sense of moral responsibility and religious brotherhood. Furthermore, King continued to develop allusions, referencing early Christians convicted for their beliefs by the Roman Empire. King mentioned how this group of religiously-devoted individuals faced hungry lions for failing to "[.] submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire" that deprived them of religious freedom (1152). .
The selections "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and "Ballad of Birmingham" by Dudley Randall shared the properties of social expressions portrayed with literary devices that addressed the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
