Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from Birmingham Jail is astonishing and powerful. After organizing a peaceful protest in Birmingham, Dr. King was arrested because of a lack of city permit for the movement. In his letter, King speaks as to why he decided to come to Birmingham to help organize the rally against the racial injustice present in the city. One interesting fact to note is that King smuggled out sections of the letter through his lawyer while spending time in jail.

In my sophomore year, I studied peaceful protests and people power movements. King’s peaceful protest approach to the discrimination in America throughout the civil rights movement is influenced by Gandhi, and it is prevalent in this letter. He approaches his audience captively and urgently to move people to become involved and fight for their own or other’s civil rights. One of my favorite quotes from this letter is “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This quote from King shows how he urges people to become involved. The idea of peaceful protests is to promote awareness for a situation in hope that the people power behind the movement grows large enough that the government feels persuaded to enact on it. Sometimes this works, and other times it fails miserably. King is an overall powerful speaker and influencer throughout the Civil Rights movement, and although this letter is very impactful to history, it is like other speeches and essays that he has written. However, King’s quote on injustice provides a staple for American intervention shown elsewhere in history. While reading this letter, one thing that surprised me was the similarities between the civil rights movement and some events in the present and past. When something goes wrong in other countries, America feels the need to intervene to try to set things right per our views. This quote reminded me of the intervention that the US has had in other people power movements as well such as the Lithuanian freedom line, the Turkish Orange Rebellion, and the feminist movement. King also introduces the idea of unjust versus just laws: “An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. ... By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.” This questioning that King introduces of right versus wrong allows provoking thoughts throughout the US in regards to civil rights, as well. Overall, King’s letter is powerful and eye-opening to those who may have been kept in the dark.