Examples Of Injustice In Letter From Birmingham Jail

Throughout history and still to this day, the topic of justice and how it is defined has been the object of dispute. Justice has been defined as just behavior or treatment. But how do we define what “just” is? How is injustice, then, defined? Injustice has been defined as lack of justice, or inequity. In the Letter From the Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr., he portrays what injustice meant towards the African American people living in the South. This letter is about his defense of the protests he was involved in and the act of nonviolent resistance to racism. This letter argued that people, who were subjected to being treated unjustly, had a moral responsibility to act out against it. I disagree with how injustice is defined because injustice is not based on a textbook definition; rather it is based on the experiences and events that are unjust. In Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter, he doesn’t simply say injustice is the unequal treatment of African American people in the South, but he dives deeper into the meaning of injustice and what it meant to the people of this time period. He

talks about how African Americans in the South were being arrested and publicly chastened by the police force for their nonviolent protests. But, he extols these protests because of what they stand for. He says they “…preserve the evil system of segregation…I wish you had commended the Negro demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer, and their amazing discipline in the midst of the most inhuman provocation” (94). Because these people were aiming to end the discrimination they were facing, and did this in a peaceful manner that respected their Judeo-Christian values that all men are created equal, King saw it as exactly what this oppressed group needed. They needed a push of confidence to know that they were being treated unjustly, and that they did have the power to stand up to