Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter From Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King Junior’s letter from Birmingham Jail is a beautiful and different sort of example in which he is taking the letter and has managed to somehow to turn it into literature. It was written in nineteen sixty-three, it is an amazing case written entirely within a jail cell because of course MLK had been arrested in Birmingham for the ridiculous charge of parading without a permit.
It provided rather unbeatable argument against injustice with its famous line, “justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (King 253), which is something that can be used even today as a discussion of when the United States get involved in other people’s problems elsewhere or how involved people should be in making sure other people are not

suffering. It is not necessarily something to look at to interpret. There is not a lot of interpretation here in that regard, but it is something that features a lot of opportunity to just appreciate what it has done in many ways it gives us a piece where we can appreciate eloquence such as this passage here, “
When you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds in inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people. (King 256 – 257)
He does not say that there is injustice in the world; he actually gives us a way to feel and a way to see it, a way for it to be shown.
He also comes up with novel metaphors such as when he is talking about the early church versus the church of the 1960s in many ways you could consider it the church of today. He says that, “… the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society”(King 264). I think that for Christians there is a lot to be analyzed and considered here. Now he said once upon a time, church was a place that would advance change and would be a beacon of progress whereas as in many ways today the church oftentimes is looked at as more conservative entities. Something that tries to tell you how things are and tries to keep them the way things are, as opposed to actually spurring on positive change for the future. MLK was somebody who wanted the church to sort of look back and reclaim those things that they had in the past.
It also makes profound statements on the nature of times saying that time is not something that does anything on its own. Time is always a sort of thing that you do something with. In your own lifetime is not just something that is going to heal things by its own virtue, it is something that is like a container where you can place things in that could end up effecting change on its own and can actually change anything. It also gives proof of profound arguing abilities such as when he makes the argument that he is not an extremist and goes on to convince you that he is not an extremist for pairing himself to other figures who are more violent or did not act with peaceable movements. He completely convinces you that he is not an extremist and then on the very next page he makes sure to convince you that he is an extremist. Then he gives a list of reasons why he is an extremist and he also gives a list of quotes backing up other people who could also be viewed as extremists. He demonstrates that most profound skill of the arguer and that he can literally argue either side of the same thing and do it affectively and winning the battle. That is how a profound rhetorician MLK was.