Letter from Birmingham Jail

Letter from Birmingham Jail

  • Submitted By: nitas1990
  • Date Submitted: 10/05/2013 11:54 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 507
  • Page: 3
  • Views: 101

Martin Luther King Jr. was the president of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). King and his fellow organization associates initiated the Birmingham Campaign on April, 1963 (King, 1964). The campaign was a nonviolent protest against the racial segregation laws aka, the “Jim Crow laws”. Martin Luther King was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama during the campaign and wrote his famous letter, “letter from Birmingham jail”. It was an open letter written on April 16th 1963. The author wrote the letter after an unjust proposal made by eight white clergymen. However, the letter was dedicated to all residing in the nation.
Dr. King’s nonviolent campaign was identified was “unwise and untimely” by several white Americans. Many suggested him to wait but to Dr. King “wait almost always meant never”. I support Dr. King because I can understand the difficulty of waiting. I understand that it is hard to wait for the fundamental rights which half of the citizens of a country are not permitted because of their skin color. It is hard to wait when we see our future generations are not allowed to visit an amusement park because of the skin color. Jim Crow laws segregated and prohibited the basic rights of African American in many ways. Even the supreme courts rule was “separate but equal” (Fireside, 1997). However, I felt that it was always separate and never equal. While reading the letter I thought to myself, is skin such a big issue? We cannot differentiate between black blood and white blood because blood is same in all human. We cannot differentiate in heart since; it’s the same heart for all human. God didn’t create separate heavens for whites and black but churches were different. Even the god-fearing clergymen never believed that all men were created equal.
Waiting for rights can create groups of violent extremist which isn’t desirable for the peace and harmony of any nation. “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever” so, they will try get gain their...

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