Analysis of "The letter from Birmingham Jail"

On April 3rd, 1963, the Birmingham campaign began and people were protesting against racism and injustice. The non-violent campaign was coordinated by King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. However, King was roughly arrested with other main leaders of the campaign on April 12th for disobeying the rules of “no parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing”. While jailed, King read a letter (“A call for unity”) written by eight white Alabama clergymen against King and his methods from the newspaper. In the letter, the clergymen stated that the campaign were "directed and led in part by outsiders," urging activists to use the courts if rights were being denied rather than to protest. The letter provoked King and “the Letter from Birmingham jail” was a written response to the white clergy men and to defend the strategy of non-violent protesting. Throughout the letter, King used many stylistic writing elements and effective emotional appealing to make people want to join his case.

His emotional appealing begins when he stated: “The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet like speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.” And his emotional appealing continues and gets more effective when he describes the suffering life of black people who are suffering from racism and injustice:” when you take a country-cross drive and found it necessary to sleep night after night in the corner of automobile because no hotel would accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading ‘white’ and ‘colored’”. This makes people want to join his case and mak...

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...lse. “We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal.’” Everything that Hitler did was legal, but immoral and wrong, and things that Hungarian Freedom Fighters were doing was illegal, but was the right thing. This alludes to King doing the right thing, but having it is illegal, and doing the right thing and doing the legal thing do not always go hand in hand. In addition to that, he also makes reference to the “Boston Tea Party” showing that civil disobedience as not a new idea.

King uses stylistic writing elements such as such as logos, ethos, and pathos and also figurative languages such as allusion, metaphor and symbolism is why it is continue to be studied. His emotion appeals are strong and effective and his sentence structures are complex and thoughtful.