Rhetorical Analysis Of Letter From Birmingham Jail

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How would you feel if, every day, you had to experience the injustice of being deemed less of a person based on the color of your skin? The year is 1963 before the iconic “I Have a Dream” speech swept the nation off their feet; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is sitting in a jail cell writing a letter in response to “A Call for Unity.” King has landed himself in jail for marching at a peaceful protest in Birmingham, Alabama that he attended at the request of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. At the time, the Civil Rights movement is in full swing and both blacks and whites are standing up for a change and demanding an end to racial segregation. An analysis of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” reveals, the appeals known as ethos, pathos, and logos help support and persuade racial equality and to explain his actions in …show more content…
Backed up with information he proves that there are steps and a plan to solve the issues, “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham.” This further explains his claims that the actions he partook in Birmingham were out of good intentions and nonviolent. King makes another statement regarding nonviolent action, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored,” that explains creating tension opens the door to negotiation, referring to Socrates for an example. Throughout the letter, King repeatedly states that the Negro community can wait no longer and that they have “waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given

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