I
Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail to emphasize his promotion of nonviolently resisting racism. King, Jr. noted that people may break laws they deem as unjust as part of their moral responsibilities. The publication of Letter from Birmingham Jail initially experienced delays, but eventually became one of the most widely published texts that enjoyed great popularity among civil rights movement supporters in the United States (US) during the 1960s (King Jr.).
Various nonviolent protests against racism happened in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, hence known collectively as the Birmingham Campaign. The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) led by King Jr. both coordinated with one another to serve as proponents of the Birmingham Campaign. In response to the Birmingham Campaign, Circuit Judge W. Jenkins issued a ruling condemning the nonviolent protests via calling on a clandestine injunction order preventing further related demonstrations, picketing and boycotts. Both the ACMHR and the SCLC vehemently disobeyed the ruling, hence resulting to the arrests of King Jr. and his fellow leaders in the Birmingham Campaign (King Jr.).
Writing about harsh experiences inside the Birmingham jail, King Jr. responded to an attack against the Birmingham Campaign published in a local newspaper entitled A Call for Unity, authored by white clergymen from Alabama who asserted that the courts are the only arenas in which advocates against racial segregation could fight their claims. In a clear bid to condemn the Birmingham Campaign, A Call for Unity labeled King Jr. as an outsider and a troublemaker in the streets of Birmingham. In response to A Call for Unity, King Jr. wrote Why We Can’t Wait in the same local newspaper and claimed as his rebuttal that the interrelation of all communities is an inescapable fact. Asserting that “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly”, King Jr. assailed the outsider label thrown to him by the white clergymen by saying that all those who live within the US are not outsiders. Moreover, King Jr. apologized for the trouble caused by the Birmingham Campaign, but defended it nevertheless by saying that it rose out of the urgency felt by the African-Americans against the white-controlled American society and the racial discrimination it entailed (King Jr.).
Although the white clergymen spoke against the tension caused by the Birmingham Campaign, King Jr. noted that the nonviolent nature of the protests was due to their objective of urging all people within American society to fix the issue of racial discrimination. For King Jr., the absence of nonviolent protests in urging people to address the matter would spell lack of progress in achieving civil rights. Furthermore, in believing in the mantra that “justicedelayed is justice denied”, King Jr. effectively disputed the white clergymen in their thoughts against the timing of the Birmingham Campaign (King Jr.).
Summarily, King Jr. emphasized on the moral obligation of people to practice civil disobedience against laws they deem unjust. In defense of the “extremist” nature of the Birmingham Campaign according to the white clergymen, King Jr. pointed out that the campaign was a form of extremism that promotes not hate, but love to all humankind, regardless of race (King Jr.).
II
The Moral Underground illustrated clearly the main point of King Jr. in Letter from Birmingham Jail, which states that people have a moral obligation to practice civil disobedience against laws they deem unjust. In The Moral Underground, author Lisa Dodson interviewed several supervisors and service providers in different fields, all of which have their respective ways of breaking away from the seeming institutionalization of poverty in the US by providing ways to ensure the welfare of workers under them. Dodson discovered that the reason why supervisors and service providers go out on their way to provide for the good of their workers is due to their recognition that disobedience arises from maintaining and following rules that cause unfair treatment against people. In one instance, teachers do not recognize items in their school curriculum asserting the socioeconomic equality of all students, given that they themselves are suffering from economic struggles. In another instance, health workers provide service to uninsured Americans by bypassing and forging forms related to insurance. Overall, in explaining the “moral underground”, Dodson states that supervisors and service providers are clearly disobeying laws violating the socioeconomic welfare of people they employ and serve in order to protect their well-being, hence effecting fair treatment, considered as “the heart of decent society” (Dodson 189-200).
On the other hand, civil disobedience as asserted by King Jr. in Letter from a Birmingham Jail has not figured in the accounts of economic injustice in Nickel and Dimed, which highlighted the contented nature of the minimum-wage workers in light of their economic struggles. In Nickel and Dimed, author Barbara Ehrenreich immersed herself in numerous forms of minimum-wage work in different parts of the US, starting as a waitress in Florida and moving on to work as a housecleaner, old-age caretaker and a worker at Wal-Mart. In every place Ehrenreich went, she discovered that there are only limited facilities for housing her income could afford; she even settled for a dilapidated motel without locks at a cost that is even more expensive than her net wage. Moreover, Ehrenreich dismissed her access to healthcare as difficult, given that the wages she received could not even afford her quality healthcare services and the health benefits she has are substandard at best. To that effect, Ehrenreich could not skip even a day of work should she wish to afford good housing and compensate for quality healthcare services. Yet, despite the experiences Ehrenreich had to undergo, she nevertheless observed that many of her co-workers kept industrious and generous attitudes, contrary to assumptions that their employment has made them resentful towards others. In light of that, Ehrenreich advocated for greater support from both the government and labor unions in terms of providing for the need of the people. Furthermore, Ehrenreich lauded the minimum-wage workers for the relentless sacrifices they provide to serve people on top of them in the economic hierarchy of the US (Ehrenreich 193-240).
III
King Jr., through Letter from a Birmingham Jail, reflects on the propensity of humans to disobey rules and institutions that cause them injustice. In justifying the foregoing, King Jr. stated that the power structure controlled by white Americans has prevented African-Americans from enjoying the liberty unconditionally promised by the laws of the US, particularly the Federal Constitution. Racism, therefore, has remained an unsettling reality for African-Americans despite the abolition of slavery during the 1860s through institutional arrangements imposed by white Americans in power (King Jr.). Dodson has attested to the tendency of a moral practice of civil disobedience in The Moral Underground through the circumvention of rules by supervisors and service providers to support economically plagued workers and clients (Dodson 189-200). Such dissent against the harsh economic realities of minimum-wage workers in the US, however, is not present in the accounts presented by Ehrenreich in Nickel and Dimed, given that she has focused more on the attitudes of her coworkers in her numerous minimum-wage employment stints (Ehrenreich 193-240). A closer assessment, however, reveals the difficulty in quantifying human nature towards dissent through civil disobedience. Human agency, in light of the situation presented in the foregoing authoritative accounts, may either lead a person to concur or dissent with existing institutional arrangements constraining his economic conditions. The tendency of a moral form of civil disobedience may stand as inevitable, but it may not happen in all instances where people experience economic constraints. The antithesis presented by Ehrenreich does not dispute the accounts of King Jr. and Dodson; nevertheless, it proves that civil disobedience on moral grounds does not happen all the time in settings with similar conditions (Dodson 189-200; Ehrenreich 193-240; King Jr.).
Works Cited
Dodson, Lisa. The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy . New York City, NY: The New Press, 2009. Print.
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In Boom-Time America. New York City, NY: Henry Holt, 2001. Print.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." African Studies Center – University of Pennsylvania. n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2013. <http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html>.
