Letter from Birmingham Jail: Rhetoric and Analysis

Introduction

While Martin Luther King, Jr. is today recognized as one of the most important leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, at the time — and especially at the beginning — he was very much criticized by his confreres for his participation in rallies and protests. His arrest in Birmingham and his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail were the result of his effort not only to silence his critics but also to motivate and mobilize them and bring them over to his side. King recognized that their criticisms of his actions stemmed more from a fear of rocking the boat than from a genuine sense of justice.

This paper provides an analysis of King's "Letter," which was a response to the public attack of eight white Southern religious leaders who urged King to abandon his activism and return to quietly leading a congregation. King, of course, had no intention of going quietly, and from the jail cell where he had been placed for exercising civil disobedience in Birmingham on behalf of the African-American community, he made his position unmistakably clear. King was in it to win it.

Summary of the Letter

The "Letter from Birmingham Jail" is a persuasive piece of rhetoric by a master rhetorician. It uses personal experience, theological arguments, and religious allegory to bring the reader to the conclusion that King's position is the only defensible one — that nonviolent protest against segregation was, in 1963, a moral imperative for all people, not just for African-Americans. King especially focused on the lessons of history and, in particular, on the teachings of the Old and New Testaments to reinforce his point. He used this approach because the letter was, after all, written to his "fellow clergyman" (King, Jr., 1963). It was not King's religion that the white ministers of the South objected to; rather, it was the fact that he was inserting himself into an issue that they felt was particularly regional, particularly sensitive, and only worsened by the practice of civil disobedience of the kind King and his followers were implementing.

To make his case for the use of civil disobedience — a concept promoted by Henry David Thoreau, the 19th-century American philosopher — King focused on dissecting the argument of his fellow clergymen. In particular, he focused on why they objected to the demonstrations but not to the conditions that made the demonstrations necessary in the first place. To prove just cause for the demonstrations, King showed how the African-Americans of Birmingham were suffering unjustly, how the negotiation process had broken down between the community and the authorities, and how there was really no choice but to follow the example of Thoreau. King does not mention Thoreau by name in his letter, but the concept is certainly present. Thoreau (1849) stated: "Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil." Thoreau further argued that "all men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable." This right, which Thoreau identified, was embraced by King and made into an imperative during the Birmingham Campaign.

King's letter goes on to examine the meaning of justice. He provides historical context for how great leaders of the past have always approached the subject of injustice, touching on Socrates, heroes of the Old Testament, Roman history, and American history. He explains that nonviolent protest does not lead to violence — rather, racism and tyranny are what lead to violence. In the end, he concludes that racism and tyranny are an assault on the Body of Christ — the Church — and that every Christian has a moral duty to stand up against a system that permits such an assault and to stand shoulder to shoulder with the community of Birmingham, as he himself has done.

Background: The Birmingham Campaign

Birmingham had been one of the most segregated cities in the United States, and for that reason it came to the attention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. African-Americans were entirely unrepresented in the police force — in a city where 40% of the inhabitants were African-American, not a single officer on the force was African-American. Unemployment was more than twice as high for African-Americans as for whites, and white workers were routinely paid twice as much as their Black counterparts. Black churches were targeted by racist groups, and some fifty bombings occurred in Birmingham from the 1940s into the 1960s (Branch, 1988; Garrow, 1989).

Because of the violence and systemic unfairness in the city, the African-American community began to push back. When the NAACP was banned in the state of Alabama, pastor Fred Shuttlesworth founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights to support the community. Shuttlesworth's home and church were bombed in retaliation, and he himself was imprisoned for daring to break Birmingham's segregation laws in 1962. Realizing he could not take on the city's authorities alone, Shuttlesworth sought more help and turned to Martin Luther King, Jr. King was eager to spearhead a campaign in support of the movement (Garrow, 1989).

The Birmingham Campaign focused on small but carefully defined goals that the community as a whole could pursue through nonviolent protest. The main goals were to achieve desegregation in the city's shops, equal rights in terms of employment, and the desegregation of schools (Garrow, 1989). Protests included sit-ins and marches. Before long, all forms of demonstration were barred by the city. King had a choice to make: give in and fight the system through the courts, or hold fast and fill the jail cells with willing participants so as to bring the spotlight of justice squarely down on the city and its methods. King chose the latter and used the Birmingham Campaign to propel himself to the forefront of the fight for desegregation.

Analysis of King's Rhetorical Strategies

In his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," King set out to justify himself and his actions before his fellow ministers by acknowledging their primary concern — that he was one of many "outsiders coming in" to the region to stir up trouble (King, Jr., 1963). King noted, in his defense, that he was not just any outsider, but rather the sitting "president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every Southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia" (King, Jr., 1963). He noted that the organization had more than 80 affiliates across the South, one of which was the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights founded by Shuttlesworth.

In other words, King demonstrated that as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he did have a legitimate stake in this fight and was entitled to participate in the nonviolent demonstrations. This was his legal approach to the argument. He justified his presence on the grounds that the organization he represented had a direct interest in the fate of so many people who considered themselves part of his flock. He also pointed out that it was not even his own initiative to come — on the contrary, he had been invited by Shuttlesworth and the local affiliate, which had "invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary" (King, Jr., 1963). King noted that he and his staff "readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promises. So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because we were invited here. I am here because I have basic organizational ties here" (King, Jr., 1963). In one fell swoop, King demolished the notion that he was an outsider with no direct connection or ties to the place or its issues.

King then proceeded to justify his presence on a greater and more transcendental scale — the scale of moral justice: "Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here" (King, Jr., 1963). He likened his actions to those of Biblical prophets who "left their little villages and carried their 'thus saith the Lord' far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns" (King, Jr., 1963). He likened himself to St. Paul the Apostle, who "left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Greco-Roman world" (King, Jr., 1963). By placing himself in the tradition of these Old and New Testament heroes of Christian culture, King firmly established himself as one of their righteous descendants, whose mission went beyond that mandated by his role as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. His mission, he implied, came from God Himself.

King's letter was not hostile by any means. He addressed his audience as "men of genuine good will" (King, Jr., 1963). Though they had criticized him, he would not respond in kind, but would give them the benefit of the doubt by assuming that their criticisms were made sincerely and out of genuine concern for their communities. By acknowledging them as men of good will, King also took the sting out of their attack and demonstrated that he was in no way swayed by their condemnations.

To make his point more persuasively, King took aim at the "white power structure" in Birmingham (King, Jr., 1963), arguing that had the community taken to the courts they would have lost every time, because the courts were controlled by white elites. The only recourse of the unjustly treated African-American community was to take to the streets in protest. King methodically walks his reader through the steps in his thought process: he shows that before taking any action, he first determined that there was just cause. He then made certain that negotiations had failed and that local merchants had failed to keep their end of the bargain struck with the community. Then King describes a process of self-purification, ensuring that those involved were motivated by a spirit of love rather than hate. Only then were demonstrations ordered. King was careful to show that the demonstrations were not emotional but logical — he did not want to be represented as an agitator or an anarchist.

King's letter then demonstrates how creating tension in society is a time-honored tactic — one that even Socrates practiced and encouraged as a means of arriving at truth. King shows that the campaign in Birmingham was both rational and religious, aligning with every campaign for justice found in the Old Testament whenever the oppressed people of God needed a leader. He also gave the letter a New Testament dimension by reminding his readers that the African-American community in Birmingham was part of the Body of Christ — that these were Christian people who simply wanted to be treated as Christians by their fellow men. He viewed the people of Birmingham as his flock and his mission as bringing people to God. Segregation was one roadblock among many that had to be overcome.

Conclusion

Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" was a turning point in both his career and the Civil Rights Movement. It articulated the basic tenets upon which the movement was founded and had universal application across the whole of the United States. It showed that King would take his struggle wherever it was needed, and that this fight went well beyond the bounds of Birmingham — though it was there that the first salvo had to be made. The letter was a justification of his own actions and of the actions of the African-American community, and it was also proof that nonviolent action could produce positive results. King received the attention he sought, and his people received the support they needed. Pressure was applied to the white power structure, and before long that structure began to buckle. That was the legacy and lasting impact of King's letter.

Unfortunately, the nonviolent protests continued to be met with violence. In September of 1963, months after King's arrest, the church at which so many of the marches and demonstrations had begun was bombed. Four girls were killed at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. The outrage was fierce, and the children's deaths helped propel the Civil Rights Movement forward to its inevitable and climactic conclusion.

References

Branch, T. (1988). Parting the waters: America in the King years, 1954–63. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Garrow, D. (1989). Birmingham, Alabama, 1956–1963: The black struggle for civil rights. Carlson.

King, Jr., M. L. (1963). Letter from Birmingham Jail.

Thoreau, H. D. (1849). Civil disobedience.