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Dr King Letter From Birmingham Jail Analysis

Decent Essays

In this essay, I will be writing my perspectives and my interpretations of Dr. King's writing, “Letter From A Birmingham Jail”.

The first 2 pages of Dr. King's speech provide nothing but hardcore facts. He’s writing to clergymen to inform and explain his side of the “story.” Dr. King was asked to come join the city of Birmingham in a non-violent demonstration. He tells the clergymen that even after promises were made, they were then broken. The demonstration didn’t come from nothing, blacks were being treated crucially. All the efforts that the black community made to sit down and talk to the city fathers did no good. City fathers didn’t even want to talk to blacks about what was going on. Dr. King also proves a point that he, nor anyone else who lives in the U.S can be considered an outsider in his/her own country. After black community leaders sat down with leaders of Birmingham’s economic community, they came to an agreement where blacks were promised racial signs would be taken down, but only a short time after, they began to realize not a lot of signs were taken down and those that were, were then put back up. This gave the black community …show more content…

King uses Apostle Paul as an example. He tells us that Paul left his village to carry on Jesus’ words, then he relates it back to himself and says he must carry the words of freedom beyond his hometown. Dr. King goes onto page 5, paragraph 2 to talk about just and unjust laws. He put the definitions of a just and unjust law in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas says an unjust law is a law that is not rooted from natural law and any law to uplift human personality is just. Dr. King then says segregation is unjust because it damages and distorts the soul and human personality. When he says it “damages the personality” he’s saying it messes up the person. You make the person seem like they are odd or different so they think there is something wrong with them and try to change

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