Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King Jr.]

I have just read this letter from Martin Luther King Jr. and it has many interesting topics in it. It is actually an answer to a critique of his protest act of the black population in Birmingham after he already got arrested for it. This critic states that his act was "unwise and untimely" but King gives us a lot reasons why it was not.

One good reason, why his act was satisfied, is that the “Negros” waited around 340 years now to get treated the same way as the white people. I really like the way how he gives us examples over and over again in one paragraph because these are really emotional and we immediately imagined them. This way of argumentation is called evaluative because it connects the reader more to the text; it feels like that King is including us. Additionally, when he is talking about being an extremist is not as bad as his critic describes him, he utilizes the factual class of argument. King is stating other people, who were extremists such as Jesus an extremist of love, Amos an extremist of justice and Paul an extremist of the Christian gospel. These examples affect the reader too because they are clarifying that extremists can be positive and negative and that his thoughts and actions might be extremist, but good and needed.

Another argument of Martin Luther King Jr. in this letter, which is stuck in my head, is the part when he is talking about the church. Even if he is the president of the southern Christian Leadership Conference, and his whole male family members in the past were preachers too, he is very disappointed with the church. King is telling us that the church in the past was much more active and had more influence and in his time it is weak and rather stays in silence than helping the people. It is not only him, but also young people, who turn their favor for the church into disgust because the white church is not doing his job how it is supposed to be because its leadership. It is true that the church lost his power and it is just said to see this happen in a world of injustice and poverty of one part of the population, which needs the help to become equal with the rest.

I believe that every argument Martin Luther King Jr. made in his answer is correct because it sounds right to help and if nothing else is working out with negotiations, it is justified to use nonviolent direct action.