LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL

Letter from Birmingham Jail

Letter from Birmingham Jail

Introduction

Martin Luther King letter "Letter from Birmingham Jail" strikes a chord with the audience because of his expert use of pathos throughout the piece. King invokes many different emotions when he uses pathos. He invokes anger, sympathy, empathy, and love to emphasize his thesis that injustice has seized the civil rights movement and therefore, he is in Birmingham City Jail. King says, "I am in Birmingham because injustice is here."

Discussion

King used to evoke the pathos of disgust, sadness and sympathy is with the description of many horrible events that occurred during non-violent protests. Like so many past experiences we face blasted hopes, and the dark shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. Due to the assumption that the audience has experienced shattered hopes in their own experiences, the above statement promotes compassion, sympathy, and perhaps understanding. In the following quote, it is clear that how the King used to create vivid images the pathos of injustice and anger at the evil acts committed and, therefore, is more open to public demand. In early January 1963, the Conference of the Southern States (SCLC), the organization for civil rights led by the Reverend Martin Luther King, took to target the city of Birmingham, Alabama, to conduct a campaign of nonviolent direct action. Such campaigns were held for several years in the southern United States, and included rallies, marches, boycotts, sit-ins and other similar tactics designed to protest and, ultimately, eliminate racial segregation and other forms of discrimination. Birmingham was a particularly important the target. It is not only one of the largest cities in the south, but also a bastion of opposition to racial integration. The city had a long history of often brutal repression of its black citizens, and the Ku Klux Klan and other organizations in favor of white supremacy it had so often used violence that sometimes nicknamed Birmingham. The Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, won the election on a platform of "segregation eternal, and the Commissioner of Public Security of the city that is Eugene" Bull "O'Connor, who personified the tough and stubborn resistance to civil rights movement. The movement itself is not registered major victory and the Birmingham campaign, thus a critical test for its ability to regain the momentum to successfully overcome one of its most sources of opposition powerful. (Lillback, pp. 46-52)

Things are complicated further because of the internal political situation in Birmingham. Anxious to restore the image undermined the city and eliminate Bull Connor, a group of white moderates are able to reform the city government and municipal elections scheduled for March. Connor is one of the candidates, and the SCLC, fearing a protest effort might create a backlash in favor of Connor, had decided to suspend action until after the election. The results of the latter, however, proved indecisive. Bull Connor and the more moderate candidate, Albert Boutwell, emerged both in mind, but none of them only obtained a majority, and had to schedule a second round for April ...