CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience

Introduction

Martin Luther King Jr. was undoubtedly one of the most influential, if not one of the most important and vital persons in the twentieth century. His crusade for civil rights for blacks, in conjunction with the majority of the black community, allowed the United States to make one final and long delayed transition from a nation with liberty for some of the country with liberty for all. King's methods of getting these privileges were often criticized by many persons in the unsympathetic white, southern community, very resolute to maintain the rank quo and their stranglehold on up to date society. King was dubbed an extremist by many, with a major criticism of his willingness to break the laws of the states that he protested in.(Maynard 2005)

Discussion and Analysis

In existence, King's tactics of civil disobedience prompted a mass uproar from the white population, but this uproar and the violence that chased were several of the main purposes for the success of the black civil rights movement. After being imprisoned for a demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama, King was forced to endure these condemnations and complaints one time again, whereas, unfortunately, one of his main sources of condemnation was the Alabama clergy. They addressed a public letter to monarch in which they conveyed their condemnation of his procedures for engineering social change, asserted him to be an outsider, and interrogated his ability to adhere to negotiations rather than demonstrations to change the Birmingham situation.(Maynard 2005)

King, in a rare move, confronted these accusations in a comprehensive letter in writing from jail to the clergy of Alabama. In this letter he detailed the explicit focus of direct action for cultural distort, explained the specific timing of his presentations, elaborated onto his looks of laws within terms of "just" and "unjust" regulations, sentenced the clergy as well as the entire southern United States for denying blacks of their innate and pledged rights, and finally appreciated the "real" heroes of the south. King was not known for retaliation in any way, shape, or form. However, this retaliatory effort in the form of written word verified to be a watermark for the municipal privileges movement as a whole. (Maynard 2005)

Dr. King's letters written from his Alabama prison cell were a rare source of feedback and response from the generally unphased municipal privileges leader. Although the main recipients of the letter were obviously the Alabama clergy, the authors of a scathing criticism to his procedures, it emerged as whether King was lecturing a wider audience in his lette r. The clergy assaulted King's methods for conveying about social change in numerous ways. Not only did they call him an outsider, but they came just short of accusing him of hypocrisy by questioning his disregard for the law and attempted to shred the validity of direct activity in the South.(Gandhi 1907)

An significant constituent of King's letter to his adversaries was a consideration on the value of direct activity, encompassing explanations of its reasons, consequences, and ...