Rhetorical Devices In Letter To Birmingham Jail

Wisdom is the ability to seek out the importance in that others are too blinded to see in life. It is the very presence that allows philosophers and the world’s greatest thinkers to differentiates themselves from the majority population. Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of the African American Civil Rights Movement, was able to realize the flaws in the American society and legislation that prevented certain individual the privileges they were entitled to from the very beginning of their lives. The Letter to Birmingham is wise because of Dr. King’s logical and effective arguments with the clergymen that this was the right time to actively rally to create tension in the society, so the authorities had to review the unjust laws at the time. And with the effective usage of Christianity and the occurrence of the Holocaust, King’s firm yet gentle tone throughout the letter confirmed his peaceful campaign on the civil right movement as he points out the flaws of an unjust society.

From the dawn of the this nation, oppression is no foreign concept to the people for over a century.

Back then, it came in the form of slavery, later on, it came in the form of segregation. “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” (King. 13). If there was one thing that Dr. King learn, it was that those who oppress will never willingly give up the sense of authority over the minority population, to get it, the victims must fight for it. He knew this because of the quite literal "painful experience" that he and the other freedom-fighters endured to get their equality. By summoning the power of the people, Dr. King hopes to stop the gruesome hate crime along with challenging the morality of the church’s on where their attitude towards the movement. Which unfortunately, they chose to alienate themselves from the fight for equal rights in the names for being by the “law and

order”.
His strategies worked well in a country dominated by Christianity. He quoted St. Augustine saying, “an unjust law is no law at all.” Because the nature of the unjust law is against the moral law of God and the Constitution, the oppressed are moral to take active action to protest in a nonviolent way in order to wake up the consciousness of the society of which white people take control of the legislation. In fact, the First Amendment of the Constitution supports the right of peaceful assembly and protest. Like Paul the disciple who strived to proclaim God’s laws of love and interpret the true meaning of those laws in the first century, MLK decided to risk his life to protest the moral rights of the oppressed and shred light to an advanced society of the country. He pointed out that in 1954 the Supreme Court had outlawed segregation in public schools, and the rights of the colored people should be the same as the white ones in the whole society.
Despite his passive reasoning of logical argumentation throughout his letter, Dr. King’s unusually harsh and direct statement about his and the people’s “disappointment” with the church has “turned into outright disgust.” (King. 39) explained his anger for these men who claims to be the follower of God. “But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. “If the church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church”, it is no different than “[another] irrelevant social club with no meaning” to it (King. 39). Their lack of support was perceived as an act of cowardice and equally unjustifiable as those who sided with the segregation. King made it clear that although he appreciates the support of his audience, being the church and everyone else who have been listening to his voice throughout the movement, he and the people will continue to persevere and succeed even without it.
Morals are not always protected by the laws. Just because something is legal, it does not mean that it is right. People “should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany” (King. 22). Even so, he explained that if he were to be in the time when Jews were oppressed, or when “certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed” by the Communist party, and those who offers support for them are bound to be punished by the laws, he would not hesitate to defy such immoral order. Humans are born to adapt and when desperate times call for desperate measures, changes must be made in order to fix the mistakes others created. King opts for people to be brave and step up for the sake of a better nation where everyone is equal as it should be. He explains the difference between conformity and individual responsibility, where the latter allows improvements to be made that can change the world if, and only if people are willing to take actions into their own hands.
A long history of race discrimination in the US shows that the segregation runs over from generation to generation, and Martin Luther King, Jr. decided to interrupt this cycle of degeneration of human personality, and he wanted to bring hope to the next generation of colored children. He envisioned a fair society without segregation in the US. It seemed that he had already prepared for this nonviolent confrontation in the white dominated community on behalf of the colored residents. He also wisely used the teachings in Bible to support his points of view against the segregation policies. He used Paul the disciple as an example of disobeying the principle of the majority were untrue doctrines were present in the ancient society of the Jews in the first century.