Analyzing MLK's Refutation of Alabama Clergymen's Criticisms

Eight Alabama clergymen made a public statement directed towards Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. containing many criticisms against the civil rights movement. The criticisms were as follows: (1) The issue of race relations should be handled by local leaders instead of “outsiders” like himself. (2) Pressing the court and negotiation among local leaders is a better path. (3) The Negro community should be more patient, for the workings of the legal system take time. (4) The demonstrations are “unwise and untimely.” (5) The methods used by demonstrators are extreme and (6) If it weren’t for the police, your demonstrations would have turned violent. As a result, King, while imprisoned in the Birmingham City Jail, wrote them a lengthy letter that refuted all of the aforementioned criticisms and then proceeded to express his disappointment in them for saying such things. Through his skillful use of diction, anaphoras, rhetorical appeals, and syntax, King successfully achieves his purposes: to refute claims made by the eight clergymen while justifying his reasons for the demonstrations he lead and to encourage the clergymen to join his cause.
King begins his letter with an appeal to ethos. By saying “My dear Fellow Clergymen,” King forces himself to be

The more he thought about it though, the more he started to embrace the label. In this anaphoric and parallel statement, King uses ethos to explain why being an extremist could be good: “Was not Jesus an extremist for love [...] Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel [...] Was not Martin Luther an extremist” Here, King uses well known figures dealing with Christianity who all practiced civil disobedience and changed the world for the better. He is telling the clergymen that he is like those aforementioned men in that he is an extremist for a positive cause and they can be