Essays on Letter From A Birmingham Jail

The letter of Martin Luther King is a reaction to the condemnation of him and his followers for a protest in Birmingham, Alabama. This condemnation was published in the newspaper, brought to King into prison where he was put for the violation of a court ban on the Birmingham rallies, marches, and pickets, issued on the 10th of April during protests of blacks (held from April 3). Languishing in his prison cell, King produced one of the most remarkable documents in the history of American thought. The number of local white priests who were friendly to King’s long-term ...

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was considered to be one of the greatest leaders of the Civil Rights era. In his letter, Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is writing in response to a letter that was written to him by eight Alabama clergymen. In their letter, the eight clergymen expressed a dislike for the activism of Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. They believed that the demonstration that Dr. King was participating in was “led in part by outsiders” (Carpenter et al.) Additionally, the clergymen seemed to praise the police of Birmingham. In ...

Henry David Thoreau and Dr. Martin Luther King are two people who helped to change America for the better with their actions and their words. Henry David Thoreau, in both is writing and in his social practice, developed a new form for citizenship and civic action called Civil Disobedience. He developed Civil Disobedience in response to his government’s support of slavery, but also its support for the Mexican-American War. Over the years, many great leaders of important social movements, both within and without America, have been inspired by the example of the life and social practice Henry David ...

Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail remains one of the most famous essays written by Dr. King, and demonstrates his mastery of rhetoric as well as ethics. Dr. Martin Luther King penned the letter while in jail for protesting segregation and Jim Crow laws in the South, and for equality and over all civil rights for African Americans in the rest of the United States. King has always been considered the most important of the civil rights leaders of that period, and the eloquence and his masterful use of rhetoric and other persuasive techniques on display ...

Philosophy

Martin Luther King has become a symbol of the movement for freedom. His words that “oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever” (King, pph. 20) inspired many people to fight for their rights. In the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” King addressed clergymen though the message was sent to the masses that were oppressed. Though de jure the letter sounds like justification of protests in Birmingham, indeed it serves as an action plan for those who have not been reminded of the birthright of freedom yet. He wrote “the purpose of our direct program is to create a situation so crises-packed that it ...

‘Instructor’s Name’

Abstract of “Letter from a Birmingham Jail" ‘The Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ written by Martin Luther King Jr., is an open letter composed during the year 1963, addressed to the local religious leaders. The letter is King’s response to the criticisms leveled against him by the Birmingham clergymen, calling his protest march as, unwise and untimely and to be violating the principles of law and order. King’s letter attempts to justify, the desperate need for a nonviolent protest against the racial prejudice prevalent in the country, and also to stress on the immorality of the segregation laws ...

In the 100 years between the end of the Civil War and the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, African Americans continued to experience the violence and racism that they had endured as slaves. This racism was not only social and political separation, but also legal separation. The legal segregation was codified into law so that African Americans were denied equal access to service and opportunities such as housing, medical care, education, employment, transportation, and entertainment. Because this separation was established in state and local laws, any resistance by African Americans resulted in arrest and prosecution. However, ...

Aristotle one of the greatest Hellenistic philosophers of Antiquity originated with the various means of classifying persuasion. The methods are categorized into; ethos that is ethical appeal that functions by persuading through the character of the persuader, pathos that persuades through an appeal to the readers’ emotions. Finally, logos persuade by reasoning and logic. Martin Luther King, Baptist Minister, in a letter from a Birmingham jail demonstrated keen and sublime mastery of these means of persuasion. Martin Luther King’s letter from a Birmingham prison was a response to the writer who had referred to his actioned of the non-violent protests as “ ...

In 1968, the famous civil rights activist leader, Martin Luther King was assassinated. His heath brought much attention to the realities African Americans were facing in the United States during the 1960s. Robert Kennedy’s speech on Luther’s assassination contributed to 1968 being a unique year in world history, as he conveying one of the supreme speeches in history. Based on the assassination and the speech that Kennedy gave, one can clearly see that a man has the capacity to influence multitudes in doing the right thing through the power of words. Furthermore, whatever an individual stands for, there is ...

Philosophy

Martin Luther King and Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Nietzsche was a philosopher who was born in 1844 in Roecken, Saxony. For all accounts, he is remembered as being a brilliant man. At the age of 24 years old, without obtaining a college degree, Nietzsche became a professor of Greek at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Nietzsche is the author of such works as Thus Spake Zarathustra, The Birth of Tragedy, The Dawn, The Gay Science, and Towards a Genealogy of Morals. He wrote Beyond Good and Evil ion 1886. Friedrich Nietzsche spoke out against Christianity as depriving men of free thought in ...

I Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail to emphasize his promotion of nonviolently resisting racism. King, Jr. noted that people may break laws they deem as unjust as part of their moral responsibilities. The publication of Letter from Birmingham Jail initially experienced delays, but eventually became one of the most widely published texts that enjoyed great popularity among civil rights movement supporters in the United States (US) during the 1960s (King Jr.). Various nonviolent protests against racism happened in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, hence known collectively as the Birmingham Campaign. The Alabama Christian Movement ...

Letter from a Birmingham jail is an open letter that was written by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 16 1963. Dr. Luther wrote the letter in defence of nonviolent resistance to racism (Ali-Dinar). The letter became an instant favourite with the American Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960 immediately it was published. Dr. King argued that people have a moral responsibility to defy and break laws that are unjust. Dr. King wrote the letter from a jail in Birmingham, Alabama. He had been arrested on April 12 1963 and placed in the jail for announcing that he and ...

ABSTRACT

Martin Luther King was a Baptist minister and Ph.D. in theology who had led the civil rights movement in the South since 1955. He referred to the founding documents and principles of the United States that promised liberty and equality for all, and noted that the country had failed to fulfill these in practice, especially because blacks had suffered centuries of slavery and segregation. His main concern was to secure basic citizenship and voting rights for blacks, and his speaking style was far more like that of a preacher and prophet. A century after slavery was abolished, blacks still faced segregation, ...

Henry David Thoreau was the first nonviolent activist who actually formulated a coherent theory of what this philosophy would mean in action, and in the 20th Century both Mahatma and Gandhi and Martin Luther King followed similar principles. None of them claimed believed that nonviolent, direct action was identical to pacifism, passive resistance or inaction. It did not imply weakness or cowardice, but the exact opposite for only the bravest people would be willing to oppose the power of the state or the majority of popular opinion. Truth, justice and morality required that the minority or the individual take a stand ...

Introduction

Martin Luther King was a Ph.D. in theology who had led the civil rights movement in the South since 1955. He referred to the founding documents and principles of the United States that promised liberty and equality for all, and noted that the country had failed to fulfill these in practice, especially because blacks had suffered centuries of slavery and segregation. His main concern was to secure basic citizenship and voting rights for blacks, and his speaking style was far more like that of a preacher and prophet. A century after slavery was abolished, blacks still faced segregation, discrimination and lack ...

For those who consider the disputed 2000 Presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore to have been controversial, the story that takes place just before the opening of Sophocles’ Antigone must seem downright barbaric. If you consider the chaos that the previous year or so had brought down on Thebes, Antigone’s wrath could just as well be considered the bellowing of an entire city, weary of its rulers’ drama. Oedipus had died after blinding and exiling himself, on the heels of discovering that he actually had fulfilled the Oracle’s prophecy of killing his father and ...