emancipation proclamation
King's "A Letter From Birmingham City Jail": An Analysis Martin Luther King Jr., one of the greatest speakers for the Blackcivil rights movement, had written many great works in his time. Two of hispieces stand out as his greatest works, Letter from Birmingham City Jail; aletter written from a jail in Birmingham where he was arrested fordemonstrating peacefully, to clergymen who didn't agree with his views, andI Have a Dream; a speech given by King in front of the Washington Memorialat a huge civil rights tea party. Both works convey the same message: thetime has come where Black Americans will not stand for civil injustices anylonger. The way in which the works are written, however, are different, forone is a letter, to be read by a few, and the other is a speech, to be A Letter from Birmingham City Jail is exactly that; it is a letterKing wrote to a group of clergy members who disapproved of his actions inBirmingham City. The fact that this is a letter is blatantly apparent rightfrom the beginning, King's use of first person clearly defines it as himtalking to the clergy members, not a convention, or a rally, nothing In his first paragraph, King establishes why h
In many a paragraph he will use a phrase that is repeatedtime and again in the paragraph. Not only doeshe present why he is there, but he justifies it by alluding to biblicalcharacters such as "the Apostle Paul", and "Paul" who did the same. By the fifth paragraph, he has stopped trying to use rhetoricaldevices, and is well into stating the cold hard facts about the injusticeof Birmingham. Another way he employs parallel construction is by making smallessays of five or six sentences, inside his speech. " Just in case this isstill too abstract, he gives an actual real event, asking "Who can say thatthe legislation of Alabama which set up the state's segregation laws wasdemocratically elected?". After much explanation and re-iteration, King starts getting simple,and switches from the abstract to the concrete, giving examples of what heis trying to get across; this is almost insulting, but King wants to makesure to get his point across. [He] is here because [he] has organizational ties [there]. Augustine that ' an unjust law is no law atall'". One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonelyisland . Last, he starts using their words against them, and that he was "initially disappointed as being categorized as an extremist,".
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