In Birmingham, Ala., in the spring of 1963, King's campaign to end segregation at lunch counters and in hiring practices drew nationwide attention when police turned dogs and fire hoses on the demonstrators. King was jailed along with large numbers of his supporters, including hundreds of schoolchildren. His supporters did not, however, include all the black clergy of Birmingham, and he was strongly opposed by some of the white clergy who had issued a statement urging the blacks not to support the demonstrations. From the Birmingham jail King wrote a letter of great eloquence in which he spelled out his philosophy of nonviolence. This essay, entitled "Letter From Birmingham Jail" demonstrates Kings exceptional literary prowess by his mastery of several rhetorical strategies to persuade.

King's rhetorical strategy to influence his audience in "Letter From Birmingham Jail" is that of a three-pronged approach. In an effort to aid in King's goal to alter societal structure, its evils, and its balance of power, he attem

. Personal responsibility, self-determination and empowerment for the disenfranchised are today's popular battle cries, as if they are new alternatives to "overcoming," when, in truth, they are vintage principles, long and widely practiced.

Kings first presents an appeal to our logic or reasoning. He does this by effectively showing a direct relationship between the reasoning for his position against segregation and it's resulting actions of passive resistance by those oppressed by it. Dr. King's appeal to our logic is most evident when he gives the reasoning for his statement "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Klu Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice" *. He deduces the fact that the white moderate does not seem to recognize "that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice," *that the tension in the South is there due to segregation, that the tension will erupt into violence if it is not the source of a transition to equality, and that to ask Negroes to "passively accept"* the indignities of segregation is to deny them their "dignity and worth" as a human being (***). Dr King's second appeal to logic is more implicit when he exhorts the reader to analyze the quote an elderly black woman who comments, "My feets is tired but my soul is at rest" (***). King acknowledges that although her statement is grammatical incorrect, and her lack of education apparent, she, though uneducated, still senses the magnitude of injustice rough upon Blacks by segregation.

His "Letter from Birmingham Jail," one of the great documents of the civil rights movement, contains a harrowing and heartbreaking description of the evils of segregation.

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Approximate Word count = 1317
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)