MLK: Letter from Birmingham Jail

The author, Martin Luther King Jr. make extended allusion to multiple philosophers, among them Aquinas and Socrates. However, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was mainly to appeal to an indisputable injustice that took place during his time. His letter was written to eight clergymen, who disagreed with the king protesting in Birmingham. Dr. King effectively pursuit his argument after analyzing the clergymen’s unjust statement and then he presented his rebuttal. In king’s 1963 letter from Birmingham jail, he argues against racial injustice. In presenting his point of view, king employs aspects of appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos to support his position. To begin, In the letter of Martin Luther King Jr.’s, which he written to the clergymen from Birmingham prison, he used the rhetorical appeal of ethos to show his reliability on the subject of racial injustice. However, Dr. King started writing his letter with “My Dear Fellow Clergymen”. He put himself on the same “level” as the clergymen by saying that, he also sends a message to clergymen that “he is no less than them and they are not better than him.” He said that he was in “Birmingham because injustice is here.” Moreover, King says “I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operation in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta.” They had some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the south, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Along with ethos, Martin Luther King Jr. then appeals to pathos by showing the litigation his people have gone through. He does this by using some lines like, “When you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim.” and “When you have seen hate-filled policeman curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters.” In these lines King was using a strong language like “vicious mobs” and parallelism like “lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim” by using this kind of language King wants to make everyone think and feel that what his friends and family had to go through in those tough time. However, throughout the whole letter using this kind of language, the audience started feeling that what it would be like to be in King’s position and feel the pain and trouble him and his family had to go through. It was really an emotional letter, and King used his emotion at the beginning of his letter to get attention of his audience. That’s what King wanted in order to make audience feel strong emotion and pain he felt and tempt the reader to keep reading the letter to listen what he had to say about those disgraceful acts, also he shows audience a supportive way to change them and explain his purpose of writing this letter in response to the clergymen. Beside ethos and pathos, Martin Luther King then appeal to logos by explaining his aim for protest and indicate reasons for the development of civil rights. Precisely, he was raising thoughts about the meaning of a “just law” and pointed out clear examples in which laws were unfair and unjust. King said, “We all should never forget about what Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and what Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal’.” Here King build a strong example of an unjust law like how it was illegal to support Jewish people in Germany under Hitler’s rule, and how he would have respond to it by giving support to his “Jewish brothers.”. This will take back to the clergymen court-implying that they should think about what they would have done. Martin Luther King explained his fight for an “extremist”. He said, “Was not Jesus an extremist for love, was not Amos an extremist for justice, was not Paul an extremist for Christian gospel, was not Martin Luther an extremist, and John Bunyan and Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson.” Here king appeal logos in this quote because it has an influence on his audience-white preachers. By pointing out important historical and religious figures like Jesus Christ, Martin Luther, and Thomas Jefferson, King made a good point that those people were doing the right thing. This appeal to logos proves historically that “extremist” foundation is not always wrong. Throughout the letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. indicated himself as legal authority in front of his audience, show his audience the pain his people had gone through, explain his cause, and argues for quick action. He used an example of religion which appeal directly to his audience. King also gave an example of many philosophers and saints, including Socrates and Aquinas. The overall urgency and call for action in the letter was underline by his strong appeal to pathos. Moreover, his personal experience appeal to ethos and logos make a strong and well around argument. King hoped for the positive change-that the clergymen will read his letter and understand the problem and work together for change. Work cited: King Jr, Martin Luther. "Letter from Birmingham jail." Liberating faith: Religious voices for justice, peace, & ecological wisdom (2012): 177-187.