Examples Of Injustice In Letter From Birmingham Jail

Throughout history and still to this day, the topic of justice and how it is defined has been the object of dispute. Justice has been defined as just behavior or treatment. But how do we define what “just” is? How is injustice, then, defined? Injustice has been defined as lack of justice, or inequity. In the Letter From the Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr., he portrays what injustice meant towards the African American people living in the South. This letter is about his defense of the protests he was involved in and the act of nonviolent resistance to racism. This letter argued that people, who were subjected to being treated unjustly, had a moral responsibility to act out against it. I disagree with how injustice is defined because injustice is not based on a textbook definition; rather it is based on the experiences and events that are unjust.
In Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter, he doesn’t simply say injustice is the unequal treatment of African American people in the South, but he dives deeper into the meaning of injustice and what it meant to the people of this time period. He

uses events that African American people have gone through to describe injustice as “…living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of ‘nobodyness’” (70). You cannot solely look at the textbook definition of injustice to really understand what people who are being treated unjustly are going through. Society makes certain oppressed groups feel on edge at all times, making them feel like they have no place in our society. It is also important to note the types of laws society places on oppressed groups that force them into being treated unjustly.
After describing the horrific events that African American people were going through during this time, his letter goes into detail of what a just law should entail and what an unjust law entails. This has significance within his letter about what injustice means because he believed that if you were being treated unjustly, you had the right and responsibility to stand up for yourself and to the oppressors. He says, “ Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality” (80). Segregation sets someone apart from someone else, in this case based off of one’s skin color. This act is damaging to the oppressed peoples character, which is an unjust thing to do. So, the previous events that he described in his letter that African American people had to go through, were breaking just laws. Because Martin Luther King Jr. believed so heavily that oppressed people needed to tear down their oppressors for unjust treatment, he not only took part in nonviolent protests but also commended others who followed in his footsteps.
In the closing of his letter, Martin Luther King Jr.

talks about how African Americans in the South were being arrested and publicly chastened by the police force for their nonviolent protests. But, he extols these protests because of what they stand for. He says they “…preserve the evil system of segregation…I wish you had commended the Negro demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer, and their amazing discipline in the midst of the most inhuman provocation” (94). Because these people were aiming to end the discrimination they were facing, and did this in a peaceful manner that respected their Judeo-Christian values that all men are created equal, King saw it as exactly what this oppressed group needed. They needed a push of confidence to know that they were being treated unjustly, and that they did have the power to stand up to

it.
This “inhuman” or cruel and barbaric treatment of the African American people in the South is exactly what injustice is. Injustice isn’t about what it is; it is about who is affected by it, and how they are treated by society. Injustice is lynching people because of their skin color and killing children’s parents right in front of them because they aren’t white and don’t have the same religious values. Injustice is degrading one’s personality and character. Injustice is a direct action against a group of people in order to purify one’s self. Injustice is the means one needs to stand up to society and argue the law that all men are created equal.