Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s, Why We Can’t Wait discusses his thoughts, views, and the history of the Birmingham protests of 1963. A lot of people did not understand what Dr. King was trying to do and his reasons behind them. This was his attempt to explain the goals and the purpose of the Civil Rights Movement to a national audience. He gives insight on the protests in Birmingham, he stresses the importance of nonviolent protests, and how it all plays out in Birmingham, and the aftermath that goes along with it. In the last chapter of the book, Dr. King reflects on his ambitions for the Civil Rights movement, which includes a program to help get black and white people out of poverty, a greater political role for African-Americans, and a greater …show more content…
He called his proposal the “Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged” (170). The national program would benefit blacks and the poor whites. According to King, African-Americans and poor whites should not have to compete for jobs. A “social work apparatus” is needed for the ones that lack education and social skills (172). He felt like the federal government should be a part of this because of the “massive resistance” that will arise if the civil rights legislation or the Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged are made into law (173). According to King, The Wagner Act that established “the rights of labor to organize” is a good example of how the federal government could …show more content…
“The Negro in winning rights for himself produces substantial benefits for the nation” (189). Equal rights for African-Americans gives equal rights to everyone. Ending segregation and discrimination will bring the nation together as a whole. He also says, “It will have enlarged the concept of brotherhood to a vision of total interrelatedness” (190). Dr. King is about bringing the people of America together, and not tearing them a part. By Dr. King using a nonviolence approach to achieve equality demonstrates that it can also be used to show a form of world peace, especially around this time when there have been threats of nuclear weapons, that can “annihilate all humanity” (190). Dr. King spoke about peace and love in despite the fact of how much hatred and violence was acted upon him or his people. He ends the chapter by saying, “Nonviolence, the answer to the Negroes need, may become the answer to the most desperate need of all humanity” (191). The threats of a nuclear attack, which has the potential to wipe out the human race, America at that time should have been coming together as a unit with peace and
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested on April 12, 1963, in Birmingham, for having a protest without a proper permit. On the exact day King was arrested, eight clergymen from Alabama wrote a letter called “A Call for Unity.” The letter called for termination of civil activities and demonstrations and designated King an “outsider” and saying that outsiders were the problems in Birmingham and not the blacks that are from there. On April 16 King wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, which was his responds to his fellow clergymen. He wrote the letter as a means to convince the clergymen and the white moderate that the nonviolent demonstrations that had got him arrested, were a necessity and to enlighten them on why the segregation laws in the southern states needed to be changed. In “Letter from Birmingham Jail” King uses logos, pathos, and ethos to persuade the clergymen and convince them in assisting him in putting an end to segregation laws of blacks in Birmingham, Alabama.
In the touching, influential letter, Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. responds to the white, Alabama clergymen who condemned his movement as “unwise and untimely” (1) and delineates his motives for traveling to Birmingham, where whites consider him an “outsider” (1). Hoping to express his ambition of nonviolent protest in a sympathetic, deferential manner, he implores the white clergy to join the struggle for Civil Rights. Throughout the letter, he addresses and disputes each negative argument by the whites, testifying his position unpretentiously, yet confidently. With aptitude, poise, and humility, King establishes his motives for coming to such an unwelcoming environment. In his heart-rending letter, King’s coherent logos, stimulating rhetorical questions, and accentuating parallel structure express to the white moderates who criticized his actions that nonviolent, direct protest is not only essential, but also inevitable to contain agitated hostility and to assume relative peace.
While the formal abolition of slavery, on the 6th of December 1865 freed black Americans from their slave labour, they were still unequal to and discriminated by white Americans for the next century. This ‘freedom’, meant that black Americans ‘felt like a bird out of a cage’ , but this freedom from slavery did not equate to their complete liberty, rather they were kept in destitute through their economic, social, and political state.
Everyone that has been through the American school system within the past 20 years knows exactly who Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is, and exactly what he did to help shape the United States to what it is today. In the beginning of the book, Martin Luther King Jr. Apostle of Militant Nonviolence, by James A. Colaiaco, he states that “this book is not a biography of King, [but] a study of King’s contribution to the black freedom struggle through an analysis and assessment of his nonviolent protest campaigns” (2). Colaiaco discusses the successful protests, rallies, and marches that King put together. . Many students generally only learn of Dr. King’s success, and rarely ever of his failures, but Colaiaco shows of the failures of Dr. King once he started moving farther North.
Civil Rights Activist A. Philip Randolph once said, “Freedom is never given, it is won.” Martin Luther King’s introduction to Why We Can’t Wait tells a powerful story of two black children born into a broken country where they fight an uphill battle against discrimination. African Americans have technically been free for one hundred years but children are still being born in chains; they carry the burden of slavery in a country they helped build. King’s passage, along with many others, made a real impact against inequality and prejudice during the civil right’s movements. King accomplished such an effective essay using rhetorical strategies such as pathos, logos, ethos, parallelism and procatalepsis, to get his message across that the attitude of 1960’s America needed a change.
Historians offer different perceptions of the significance of Martin Luther King and the 1963 March on Washington. Without examining this event within its historical context the media publicity and iconic ‘I Have a Dream’ speech can easily overshadow progress that was already underway in America. It was insisted by prominent civil rights activist Ella Baker, ‘the movement made Martin rather than Martin making the movement.’ What is important not to overlook is the significant change that took place in the United States during the previous 100 years. Such that, many influential figures in support of racial equality opposed the March. The Civil Rights Act proposed by President Kennedy in 1963 was already in the legislative process. Furthermore the Federal Government was now reasserting power over the entire of the United States by enforcing a policy of desegregation. It is important to note that these changes all took place less than one hundred years after the Thirteenth Amendment in 1965 abolished slavery, and the Fourteenth amendment in 1968 acknowledged the rights of former slaves to be acknowledged as U.S citizens. With this level of progress Kennedy was against the March going ahead due to the argument that it was limited in what it could achieve. Today, King’s 1963 Speech is viewed as one of the most iconic speeches in history. However, was it a key turning point in African Americans achieving racial equality? Federal endorsement would suggest yes after decades of southern states being able to subvert the Federal law designed to break down segregation. This support built upon the corner stones of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments in the nineteenth century. Therefore looking at the national status of black Americans fro...
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the leader of a peaceful movement to end segregation in the United States this mission led him in 1963 to Birmingham, Alabama where officials and leaders in the community actively fought against desegregation. While performing sit-ins, marches and other nonviolent protests, King was imprisoned by authorities for violating the strict segregation laws. While imprisoned King wrote a letter entitled “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, in which he expresses his disappointment in the clergy, officials, and people of Birmingham. This letter employed pathos to argue that the leaders and ‘heroes’ in Birmingham during the struggle were at fault or went against their beliefs.
Racial inequality is once again on the forefront of Americans ' minds, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement has become a topic of contentious debate. However, this tension is by no means a new phenomenon, this is the same anger that inspired civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr to rally against the status quo and fight for racial equality. The essay "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" by King addresses the same issues of racial inequality, prejudice, and police violence that has given rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. In the 1960 's, the Jim Crow laws that mandated segregation and prevented black Americans from voting were brutally, and blatantly racist policies. Additionally, the penalties for breaking these laws
In Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, he elaborates on the injustices that were wildly plaguing America in the year 1963. Black people all over the country were being treated unfairly, locked up in prison for false crimes, and refused the great opportunities that white people were so lucky to receive. Before the year 1963, President Abraham Lincoln was the last person to make such an impact in the equal treatment of all people, so for about 100 years, blacks had no one to back them in their fight for equal treatment.
On April 16, 1963, from a jail in Birmingham, Alabama, Martin Luther King Jr. composed an extensive letter to eight clergymen who condemned the timing of the civil rights movement. Although the letter was addressed to these eight clergymen, the Letter from Birmingham Jail speaks to a national audience, especially King’s “Christian and Jewish brothers”(King, 29). His peaceful but firm letter serves as a remarkably persuasive voice to an immensely chaotic mess, and is seen as a major turning point in the civil rights movement. King believes that without direct action, the full rights for African Americans could never be achieved. He defends the impatience of people in the civil rights movement, upholding that without forceful demonstrations, equality will never be reached. King upholds that human rights must take precedence over unjust laws. His eloquent language and use of classical argumentation make his case resilient and convincing. King’s expert use of pathos invokes anger, sympathy and empathy; his impeccable use of logos made his argument rational to all; and his use of ethos, especially his use of biblical references, makes his opinions more authoritative.
Dr. King explains that the African American community in Birmingham had faced unjust treatment with the justice system, and he spoke of unsolved bombings of their homes and churches. “We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given
King, Martin Luther Jr. “Letter from the Birmingham jail.” Why We Can't Wait 1963: 77-100.
Recently you have received a letter from Martin Luther King Jr. entitled “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In Dr. King’s letter he illustrates the motives and reasoning for the extremist action of the Civil Rights movement throughout the 1960’s. In the course of Dr. King’s letter to you, he uses rhetorical questioning and logistical reasoning, imagery and metaphors, and many other rhetorical devices to broaden your perspectives. I am writing this analysis in hopes you might reconsider the current stance you have taken up regarding the issues at hand.
In “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Dr. Martin Luther King brings attention to the reality of racial inequality in the 1960s. King writes this letter in response to clergymen addressing their apprehensions regarding the timing of the nonviolence demonstrations. The letter addressees specific arguments presented in the clergymen’s letter and his direct response. King’s goal in writing this letter is to convince the clergymen that his strategies are right and just. In this section, King rebuts the allegation made by the clergymen that his actions were untimely. In his counter argument, King uses repetition, metaphors, emotional appeals in order to persuade the audience to support his cause.
The demonstrations resulted in the arrest of protesters, including Martin Luther King. After King was arrested in Birmingham for taking part in a peaceful march to draw attention to the way that African-Americans were being treated there, their lack of voter rights, and the extreme injustice they faced in Alabama, he wrote his now famous “Letter from Birmingham.” In order to gain an understanding of King’s purpose for the letter, it is important to begin by explaining “A Call of Unity”, a letter written by a group of white clergymen urging the end to the demonstrations. The letter was published in the Birmingham Post Herald with a copy given to King. The letter made many claims including that the demonstrations were led by outsiders, they were unwise and untimely, and urged the black community to withdraw their support (Carpenter, Durick, Grafman, Hardin, Murray, Ramage, Stallings, & Harmon, 1963)....