Declaration Of Independence Document Analysis

The Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson is a document written in 1776 that aimed to create equality among all persons on earth and grant everybody certain unalienable rights. Nearly 187 years after this document was written, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter from inside the Birmingham jail addressing the inequality that African American people were facing in the South. Nearly all white people in the South during this time were interpreting the Declaration in different ways that supported the segregation of African Americans and white supremacy where they took the phrase “separate but equal” out of context. Martin Luther King Jr. provides detailed events of unjust treatment based on race within his letter where he aims to re-interpret …show more content…
were fighting for a more just treatment of the oppressed groups of society by advocating for protests against unjust laws. King advocates for protests when he says, "It was illegal to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's anti-religious laws” (72). Martin Luther King Jr. is advocating for peaceful protest here by referencing Hitler and his communist actions that oppressed the Jewish people and saying that in some cases, such as this one, where a group of people are being treated unjustly, there needs to be protests where the oppressed groups of people can stand up for themselves. Thomas Jefferson references the unjust laws that the King of Great Britain was imposing on people in his time period when he says, “He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only” (88). This is a description of an unjust law because Jefferson is essentially saying that the King of Great Britain was forcing people to establish representation for themselves, which is something they were never going to be able to do. These descriptions of unjust laws go hand in hand because they both describe in different time periods, how certain groups of people were being oppressed by the domineering groups of society. Both Jefferson and King believed in the context of when their documents were written, that people needed to stand up for themselves against the oppression they were