Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote “Letter from Birmingham jail" in response to the harsh letter sent to him by eight white clergymen. The letter sent by the clergymen was regarding King‘s actions against segregation, King, being a civil rights leader, defends the legitimacy of protests and sometimes refers to breaking the law in nonviolent movements.. The reason behind King’s struggle, is that he thinks segregation is very long overdue and it is very unfair; so King uses ethos logos and pathos to write this letter. In this letter, King shows a lot of emotion. King was invited to Birmingham. where he is then incarcerated for almost nothing. While incarcerated, King responds to the letter written to him by the clergymen. This is when he makes the first appeal to ethos. He starts off the letter with, “My dear fellow clergymen." By saying this. he is stating that he is also a respected, trustworthy, Christian man.

This also means that King was trying to bring up a sense of equality when trying to categorize himself with the clergymen. At the beginning, King tells his audience why he is in Birmingham jail. King uses anaphora to help him explain why he is there. He states to his readers that he is there because there is injustice, and he is not leaving. King then makes an appeal to ethos by referring to the prophets in the eighth century B.C. King makes this connection because he believes he is the same as the prophets that carry out Gods word but he carried the word ofjustice to the people of segregation. An example of this is when King stated, “Like Paul, I must constantly to the Macedonian call for aid." Another example of King’s use of ethos is when he states, “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?

The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust.” King says this because he is breaking some laws when protesting or sitting in, but it is for the good. King uses many examples of pathos in the letter. One of the main examples I think he uses is when he states, “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” When I read this, it emotionally connects to the pain and anger of a black man in the 60‘s. “I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now. there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance become unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and deny citizens the first amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.“ The words from King here are very important to the letter. King uses the appeal of pathos to make the reader feel sympathetic for him. King also uses vivid figurative language to show that we as a nation are behind in ending segregation.

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The metaphor he uses is... “we still creep at a house-and-buggy race toward a cup of coffee at a counter.” This a good yet funny metaphor because a task so easy should be done easily, and our nation cannot do it. Who would ever want to be an outsider? Certainly I wouldn‘t. King again uses pathos to appeal to the reader. King said..."anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.” This statement by King shows that he wanted everyone in the United States to understand that slavery is very bad. King then uses pathos again to connect to the reader when he says..."the vast majority of your twenty million negro brothers smothering.” When he says this he is appealing to pathos because he says “your”. In Kings letter, he says a few sad things to appeal to the audience's pathos.

The first one is...” we were the victims of a broken promise” This means that someone once told King that he would be free from slavery along with all of his other brothers but was eventually let down. The second quote is..."our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappoinunent settled upon us." King means for this line to mean the same as the last; slavery should be abolished. All of the discussed examples of pathos here are very strong. This next example from the letter; I think, is the strongest point in the whole letter for pathos. “like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured." I think this quote by King is very strong.

He is saying that if we would ever want to end slavery, that all would have I come together as one to finish it. King uses all those examples of pathos and ethos but would not be complete without using logos. A very strong example of logos in the letter is..."there have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham then any other city in the nation," King really appeals to the reader’s sense of logic because Birmingham is segregated. but he is also saying that other places are being bombed also. King states..."it is a historical fact that privileged groups give up there privileges voluntarily." King is saying that being in the black community, they never gave up their privileges voluntarily; they were taken from them by force. King then goes on to make another statement appealing to logos. "We have waited for more than 340 years," This is an appeal to logos because it is a fact. King then refers to the constitution.

This is smart because nobody can argue with the constitution. King has a few other examples that might not be obvious of being ethos, logos, or pathos. One example is when King questions the police. “They have conducted themselves rather nonviolently in public, to protect the evil system of segregation. King means that the police are doing everything they can to keep slavery going, but at the same time make it seem like they are on the Negros‘ side. Shortly after, King uses imagery to appeal to all types of readers. “I doubt you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had saw its dog sinking their teeth into an unarmed nonviolent negrol King says this to leave an image in the reader’s mind that would last a long time. At the end, King had really made an impact on slavery His non-stop drive to abolish slavery was immaculate.

King writes this letter in response to criticism, but comes out with way more in the end. King does a great job of using ethos, logos, and pathos. Without those three elements king would not have been able to get his point across to the eight clergymen and all the other readers. King also uses very good imagery and figurative language to get his point across. The letter written by King makes him sound so much more educated then any of his hateful audiences reading his letter. I say this because he wrote this letter in jail, were you cannot look up any information. This would make it very difficult to respond to the letter written to him by white clergymen. This letter shows how much freedom really meant to King. This letter was written in 1963, just a few years before his assassination King died in 1969; therefore, he did not see his dream come true.

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