The letter from Birmingham was written by Martin Luther King Jr. as a response to the religious leaders who criticized him for taking part in anti-segregation movements. King claimed that it was not like him to easily respond to detractors, because doing so would consume all his time which would otherwise be used for productive purposes. However, he thought that it was best to answer the criticism thrown at him by the clergies. His message in his letter from Birmingham may be thought of as his way of defending of himself from his detractors, yet a closer analysis would reveal how he wanted to convey that it was his responsibility, as anyone else, to fight against any forms of injustices.
In his letter, king defended himself against the criticism that he was an outsider in Birmingham according to how his detractors described him. He claimed that he came not as an outsider because he was in fact the “president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference” (King, n.p), and that he was in Birmingham by virtue of the invitation for his presence in the activities of this particular regional chapter. Further, expressed that he was in Birmingham because of the injustices that was prevalent in the place. He likened himself to Paul the apostle who preached beyond the boundaries of his hometown. Just like Paul, King thought that it was his duty to work against injustices, not only in his locality, but also in other places where there is injustice. According to King, it was not like him to sit pointlessly in Atlanta while there was too much work to be done in Birmingham.
There was also the criticism against King’s participation in public demonstrations, which he countered that there was no other way to make his point across except to stage demonstrations against discrimination and injustices. The demonstrators were not there for no apparent reason, they were there because the “city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative” (King, n.p). Nevertheless, he cited that his group has abided by the four basic steps for a nonviolent protest, which are the collection of evidence that injustice occurred, effort towards negotiation with concerned individuals, self purification which involved inner reflection and direct action.
The overall theme of King’s letter to Birmingham was the prevalence of injustices, not only in Birmingham, but throughout the country. He expressed that justice has a way of upholding the human spirit, yet injustice can have a negative impact. Further, he claimed that an individual who was a witness to an injustice and did nothing to fight against it, was also a supporter of injustice. Thus, he defended himself against the accusation of breaking laws. He wrote that there were two types of laws, which are the just and the unjust. While he claimed to be the first advocate in obeying just laws by virtue of the legal responsibility to obey them, he also pointed to the moral duty to disobey unjust laws. He cited what St. Augustine once said that “an unjust law is no law at all”. It has been in differentiating between the just and unjust law that King came into the test as to how to distinguish one from the other. He argued that any law that helps to uplift the human spirit is a just law, while those that dampen it is unjust. He further exemplified the law in segregation which ends up downgrading humans to the status of things.
Works Cited
King, Martin Luther, Jr. Letter From Birmingham Jail. The Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963
