Injustice Is Here: An Analysis of King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail
On April 12, 1963, Eugene “Bull” Connor detained Martin Luther King, Jr, Ralph Abernathy, and 50 other Birmingham residents for their participation in direct action protests aimed at attracting media attention by igniting the local government’s anger. Eight local clergymen opposed these direct action protests, and addressed a letter to Dr. King while he was imprisoned in the Birmingham Jail. Writing his reply on the margins of a newspaper smuggled to him by the janitor, King put forth a strong, convincing treatise on the Black quest for justice. In his letter, he defends his presence and his methods, defends his cause, and concludes defending those who participated in the protests. The letter is a rhetorical masterpiece, striking a chord within the reader even 50 years later.
The title “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was first included in the letter’s publication in the June 1963 issue of the New Left magazine Liberation. King later included the full text of the letter in his book Why We Can’t Wait, published in 1964. The reprint cited in this paper is Annette Rottenberg and Donna Winchell’s Elements of Argument. King was the self-proclaimed “son, grandson, and great grandson of preachers” (203), and wrote this letter as the President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from the Crozer Theological Seminary in 1951, and a Doctor of Philosophy in systematic theology from Boston University in 1955. He calls on this religious background throughout his letter, referring to the Apostle Paul, the early Christian movement, and Christ’s extremism often. King’s work as a pastor and his great skill as an orator led him to the forefront of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, culminating with his march on Washington in August of 1963. He was later recognized alongside Malcolm X and Rosa Parks as a champion of the civil rights movement, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
King confidently states his thesis in the third paragraph: “Injustice is here” (194). After presenting this thesis, he compares himself to the prophets of the Old Testament and to Paul of the New Testament to develop his thesis that “injustice is here,” and like Paul, he is compelled to carry forth the gospel of freedom, to “respond to the Macedonian call for aid” (194). The first third of his letter is dedicated to supporting this thesis, that King was justified in going to Birmingham and leading a series of protests to push forward the cause of justice. He delineates the elements of a nonviolent campaign, what role direct action plays in the campaign, and justifies his direct action. King analyzes the morality and justice of his cause, presenting Aquinas’ philosophy that “an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law” (197). The bulk of King’s letter states his disappointment with the “white moderate[s]” and their willingness to stand by while injustice rules and why these white moderates should rise up and join his cause. Finally, King ends by presenting his disappointment with the community’s churches in not supporting God’s cause of freedom, causing the Church to “lose its authentic ring” (204).
Because liberty is such an emotionally charged subject, Dr. King employs extensive use of definitions throughout his letter. From the beginning, he sets out to define a nonviolent campaign as having four basic steps: “collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action” (194). He uses that definition as support for his claim that direct action is justified as he describes the actions he has already taken in Birmingham, and that the first three steps had already been fulfilled to no avail. He later defines direct action as “[seeking] 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” (195). This definition stipulates that the clergymen accept that direct action is a method of inciting negotiation, making them set aside their own idea of direct action as a method of inciting violence.
When King proceeds to analyze the justice of his cause, he presents his definition with St. Augustine’s idea that “an unjust law is no law at all” (197). He continues his argument using hypophora to introduce an extended definition of an unjust law. “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law” (197). He takes four paragraphs to extend this basic definition of an unjust law, and uses two examples to further support the definition. In the simpler example, King states that he was arrested for parading without a permit, but that the law becomes unjust “when the ordinance is used to preserve segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and peaceful protest” (198).
What may possibly be the greatest value claim of the 20th century came from this letter. While discussing the interrelatedness of all communities and states, King claims “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (194). He supports this claim by continuing, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” (194). In a sense, King uses the majority of his letter to demonstrate that there is injustice in Birmingham, and that there thus exists a threat to justice everywhere.
King makes a strong policy claim when discussing that a peaceful action that precipitates violence does not condemn the peaceful action. He begins his argument by presenting situations in which the end does not condemn the means: should a robbed man be condemned because he possessed the money that precipitated the robbery? Should Jesus be condemned because his fanaticism precipitated his crucifixion? By comparing the Negro plight to that of a robbed man, King makes his bold claim, “Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber” (199).
Near the end of his treatise, King makes a strong factual claim: “We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands” (205). This claim is, of course, preceded by supporting examples of the nation’s sacred heritage, the pilgrims landing at Plymouth, Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, and the “gross injustice and shameful humiliation” (205) that his forbearers suffered. This claim of fact has, indeed, been proven true over the last 50 years in our own country as well as in other nations.
Identifying himself as “president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference… [with] some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South” (193), King clearly establishes himself as the leader of a national Christian group, forming a strong ethos. Later on in the paragraph, he states, “I am here because I have organizational ties here” (194). This introduction seems to have the objective of establishing the validity of his claims he presents later on in the letter. King also extensively uses allusion to build up ethos. In one section, discussing civil disobedience, he mentions Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the early Christians, Socrates, the Boston Tea Party, Nazi Germany, and the Hungarian freedom fighters. By making these frequent historical and biblical allusions, he marks his position as a knowledgeable scholar and establishes rapport with the clergymen.
Discussing satisfaction from being labeled an “extremist,” King alludes to Jesus, Amos, Paul, Martin Luther, John Bunyan, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson as extremists of their time. He links these biblical allusions with the phrase “was not,” for example, “Was not Amos an extremist for justice?” (201) By visually connecting these allusions with a similar linking phrase, each allusion strengthens the next, strengthening his argument. Perhaps the eighth allusion King would have mentioned is “was not Martin Luther King an extremist for human rights?”
The eight clergymen who originally addressed King wrote that “hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions” (193), and urged their Negro community to “unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham” (193). King uses reasoning by contraries to show that he does not have violent intentions. In his reply, Dr. King writes of two opposing forces in the Negro community, one a force of complacency, and one a force of bitterness and hatred. King presents both ideologies and concludes that if he had adopted the ideology of the black nationalists, “many streets of the South would be flowing with blood” (200) and that if allowed to continue the complacent Negro would take solace in the hatred of the nationalist, “a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare” (201). By expanding on this idea, he logically concludes that peaceful disobedience is the better way to reach the goal of freedom, thus invoking a rational response from the clergymen.
Using his remarkable oratory skill, King utilizes pathos extensively throughout his response. One such section is a direct response to the clergymen’s plea to “withdraw support from these demonstrations… a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets” (193). In a heart-wrenching exposé, King graphically describes the Negro oppression, mentioning lynch mobs, a lack of respect for his wife, his child’s heartbreak at an amusement park, and being “harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance never quite knowing what to expect next” (197). He ends this description by asserting that “there comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of injustice where they experience the blackness of corroding despair” (197).
Discussing his disappointment with the Church, King states “Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists” (203). This statement alludes to King’s warrant that God’s cause is the cause of justice. For King’s argument to have any effect on the readers, in this case the eight clergymen, they must accept the unstated assumption that God is displeased with the Church for their handling of these social issues. King clearly states that “the judgment of God is upon the church as never before” (204), but the clergymen must accept that warrant for the rest of the argument to be valid.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (194) seems to be the ideology behind many of the world’s upheavals. Was that not the philosophy that led the United States into the Middle East? What makes today’s leaders different from Dr. King? Looking back at the civil rights movement, we know that King was a hated man. The FBI called King “the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country,” and its director J. Edgar Hoover called him “the most notorious liar in the country.” I think today’s issues are just as polarizing in our society, but I do hope that someday we will be able to look back and be as proud of our leaders today as we are of Martin Luther King.
It is my opinion that King’s letter offers a clear view into the ideology of the freedom fighters of the civil rights movement. Although King employed the letter to defend his position against those who would oppose it, careful analysis can serve to strengthen our own resolve to the cause of justice and freedom. Too often we fall into a stagnate state of complacency, and even 50 years later Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail can serve as a rallying cry for us as today’s freedom fighters, when we find that, as in Birmingham, injustice is here.