Martin Luther King Jr.'s Quest To Defeat Unequal Laws

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s Quest to Defeat Unequal Laws in Alabama “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws” (King 382). Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that laws are unjust if they apply only to certain groups, and he personalized his argument for the clergymen that were condemning him. Some laws in Birmingham were not fair to every race and only targeted minorities. He was non-violently protesting to change these unjust laws so that every man, woman, and child could have the same opportunities and rights. Injustice had infected Alabama, and he wanted it to stop before it spread to other parts of the country. Martin Luther King Jr. believed he was jailed not merely for protesting without a permit, but because the government was trying to keep white people and minorities separated: “Such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest” (King 383). Peaceful protesters being detained by the police inherently starves black people of the right to stand up publicly for themselves and plead their case to the community. Although Dr. King has been labeled an extremist, he knew that …show more content…
Dr. King expounds upon how the black people are being taken advantage of by saying that, “Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered.” (King 383). The reasoning provided in “The Letter from Birmingham Jail” indicates that during that time black people had little to no right to vote. The black men and women had to go through a more rigorous screening to vote than white people, causing whole counties to be deprived of any black registered