Depiction of The Injustices of Birmingham in Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from Birmingham Jail

In the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., he explains the injustices happening all over the United States, but especially in the city of Birmingham. King and his followers are preparing for direct action because they have collected facts about the ongoing injustices in Birmingham, and the city officials refuse to negotiate. Even when they agree to negotiate, they fail to comply. Now the process of self-purification has begun, involving educating themselves and realizing what's going to happen next.

Representation of Birmingham's Injustices in Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail

King is not only speaking to his fellow clergymen but to everyone because he states, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (King, 1963). “All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality,” and what King means is that one person is being invalidly superior and the other inferior (King, 1963). African Americans' souls would be distorted, and their personalities would be damaged, while anyone causing this would get a false uplift in their personality. This creates emotional and psychological pain that would scar a person for the rest of their life, changing them drastically. It is morally wrong, and King urges people to civilly disobey segregation to the fullest extent. He compares the year 1963 to earlier times when Adolf Hitler was killing Jewish people legally, but it was illegal to aid them in Germany. King states that because it was morally right to aid and comfort a Jewish person in need, he would do so even though the law says otherwise, highlighting its injustice at that time. This clearly states how it's acceptable to civilly disobey the law because it is morally correct to do so. King agrees with St. Augustine on “An unjust law is no law at all” (King, 1963), for example, the “outside agitator idea” meaning that if you are not from here, you cannot live here. Anything that affects one single person in this country affects everyone in one way or another.

“Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States” (King, 1963). King also claims that just because the injustices are happening in Birmingham, it does not mean they aren't happening elsewhere. This ongoing issue of injustice there is just one of the problems in the big picture. He is trying to explain to everyone that this is connected to racial injustice on a national level, not just in the city of Birmingham. There are unsolved bombings, unfair treatment, and unsolved bombings in churches and homes going on in Birmingham, and these are the collection of facts.

The Call for Action

“Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity,” King claims, and he believes that the national system is in quicksand, and he wants everyone to get out of it and shine a light upon it (King, 1963). “We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights” King strongly states because of what they have been through (King, 1963). King provides almost a whole pageful of examples of what African Americans have endured because people who have never experienced segregation keep delaying their basic civil rights and keep saying “wait.” He is declaring that enough is enough already, and there is no better time to act than now.

King and his followers have tried to negotiate, but city officials refuse to do so. They have realized what has to come next and started organizing for direct action. King is trying to create an atmospheric pressure of discomfort for the city officials to make the change happen already. All King is trying to do is open the door for negotiation. In the letter from Birmingham Jail, King states that some people have questioned his direct action call, which means he is doing right, and they are feeling pressured. Martin Luther King Jr. will spread the word of freedom as Apostle Paul did with the word of Jesus Christ, leaving their hometowns for it. He has a deep knowledge of the Bible and the history of Christianity, so he relates himself to Apostle Paul as him being the leader like himself and trying to convert people not into Christians, but into people that believe in equality and freedom for all. King believes this is his duty and his call for aid, and he will do it consistently and constantly, like Paul responding to the Macedonian call for aid. King's followers are Americans who believe in his word, and it is people who can see the relation between good morals and Christianity. In a letter from his brother from Texas, it states that “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, … it has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has…” (King, 1963). King includes this in his own letter because he is comparing his journey to the journey of Christianity.

Conclusion

All in all, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spread the gospel of freedom throughout the United States and sent a powerful message. Because of King’s parades and non-violent direct action gatherings, he created a spark and made a change that affected everyone in one way or another. As analyzed in this essay, in the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King stresses the injustice happening in the city of Birmingham, Alabama. King shed light not just on that city but exposed that this is not only happening there but is all over the nation. The United States and the city of Birmingham are connected to each other, and the injustices happening there are tied to the whole racial injustice all over the United States. This letter was not only made for his fellow clergymen but meant for all.

References

King, M. L. Jr. (1963). Letter from Birmingham Jail. Retrieved from [source].