Letter From Birmingham Jail Analysis

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Visualize arriving at a cinema and spotting a little African American girl sobbing on the corner of the road. Due only to the color of her skin, she was not granted permission to enter the theater. Prior to the civil rights movement in the 1960’s, this vicious discrimination was rampant. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an African American preacher, vigorously believed the equality and unity of the nation was a critical aspect of life. King fought faithfully for freedom and justice. Throughout his speeches and letters, he used logos, logical facts and statements to prove a point, and pathos, a type of language used to evoke a certain feeling or emotion. Martin Luther King, Jr. motivated the American public by utilizing persuasive appeals to emphasize …show more content…

“Letter From Birmingham Jail” displays the use of logos to demonstrate the true reasoning foregrounding his argument. As time went on and no change was made, King stated in the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights” (275). After all of those years of fighting for their liberation, the African Americans were still segregated, treated overall as lesser beings by the general society. Martin Luther King Jr. uses logical and true facts to represent the large amount of time that they have waited to achieve freedom and justice. He believed action needed to be taken “now.” Society had repressed the rights of African Americans for an excessive extent of time. To emphasize his true message, King illustrated his passion through the use of pathos to demonstrate the suffering of African American people. To fixate on the vital matter of African American suffering, King claimed, “vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers...drown your sisters and brothers...curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters” (“Letter from Birmingham Jail” 275). By stressing the authenticity of the situation, Martin Luther King, Jr. portrayes that all the African Americans can connect on an emotional level, since they are all treated the same. By saying “sisters and brothers”, it shows how King feels about the African American community. He reckons they are as one, collectively suffering. To show how the African Americans are genuinely treated, it can formulate readers to feel sympathy towards the race and overall situation, by using pathos. Martin Luther King, Jr. uses powerful language to compel his audience to expound the effects of

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