Martin Luther King And Birmingham Analysis

We must glimpse the past if we are to construct a better future. Many may ask themselves, “Who am I?” but it is the revelry in understanding that basically our future lies in the past, such that it can only be answered by, “Where do I come from?” Looking to great leaders from our past bridges our connection to our future. Martin Luther King and now President Obama are excellent representations of this connection. Both faced the issues that plague America’s past, even though they are a part of different time periods. There are two specific works that address these some of these issues, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” written by Martin Luther King Jr. and the speech given by Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union.” Although “Letter from Birmingham

This letter addressed the criticism he received while peacefully protesting. It was also a response to the injustices he witnessed and experienced while visiting the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Birmingham branch. He explains how he and the SCLC organized their plans of nonviolent action for change in not only the segregated schools in Alabama, but for the discriminated people of America. Dr. King declares, “Justice too long delayed is justice denied” (344). He states that African American people have waited more than 340 years for constitutional and God-given rights (King 344). His pleas for recognition of the mass injustices and his assemblies of nonviolent actions caused a wave of changes to occur across the country. His teachings and actions paved the way for African Americans and other minorities to be given the opportunity to exceed expectations and not to be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. One such person became our 44th President. Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech was given during his 2008 campaign for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. He wrote this speech, not only in response to the disputed remarks made by his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, but also to address the discriminatory injustices minority races still face today. In his speech he spoke about race issues, inequalities

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his letter to show people that, to affect change in the divided country of the time, some doors had to be knocked down so moral freedoms could be established for a whole people that were considered second-class citizens. Obama’s speech talked about the issues still occurring today. He mentions the Brown vs. Board of Education case, “Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students” (Obama 359). This case caused the schools across the country to become racially integrated however, Obama goes on to explain how economic segregation between races still stands. Toward the end he pleaded that to improve as a nation, we need to move beyond this old way of