Rhetorical Strategies In Letter From Birmingham Jail

He writes this letter to defend his organization and peaceful protesting, yet also identifies the racial injustices he, and many other citizens received. King’s writing was very effective in accomplishing his goal to get his point across that segregation is a very serious thing. King hopes that his powerful and emotional message in his letter will impact how the clergymen, the whites, and many others approach and take action towards segregation. He hopes that they will see how terrible inequality truly is and make the American Society have less hate and more

Blakely Williams October 13, 2017 Composition I Prof Yarborough “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Rhetorical Analysis In Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” he provides his audience with his motive, to unite the then new age civil rights movement with non-violence, through multiple allusions to past philosophers, vivid imagery, and the three artistic appeals: ethos, logos, and pathos. King did all of this to justify his civil disobedience to the clergymen that wrote him in hopes to make it be known that “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.”

In this letter by Martin Luther King Jr., he wants to explain to the eight clergymen why he has been jailed. He wants to show them that what he was doing was necessary. The clergymen were confused and upset about his image and wrote a statement explaining their own views. After reading this statement, King wanted to have these men completely educated on the matter. King does this by persuading his audience, using various rhetorical devices.

Throughout the essay “ Letter From Birmingham Jail. ''King gives the message to the people to have a moral obligation to violate unfair laws and to take immediate action as opposed to perhaps waiting an eternity for justice and racism to be served. King is telling his fellow black community to stand up and face these unfair actions that are being set for his people and to address the racism that is taking place. King uses two rhetorical strategies to convey his message to his audience. The first strategy king uses is the mode of argument to convey his message to his audience, he also uses the second strategy he uses repetition and parallelism.

King notably uses several rhetorical questions as a means to guide his audience into following his position on the criticisms that were plagued on him by the published caution statement. For example, when Dr. King begins addressing the potential rebuttals to his response he states, “You may well ask, "Why direct action, why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" ” With this question King is able to open his perspective on negations and how they have been attempted between the African community and those White public figures that can prove to be useful in the battle for African American Civil Rights and how those “negations” resulted in empty promises. Additionally, King also uses this topic of negations because he is able to emphasize the point that the more negations are ignored the more “crisis-packed” the issue becomes, eventually forcing the community to directly face the issue of injustice towards African Americans.

In April of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. found himself in the public spotlight, as he and a group of supporters engaged in civil disobedience, protesting in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. King and the other protesters were jailed, and here it was that Martin Luther King Jr. crafted the text “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Kings letter was a response to the clergyman of Birmingham, who previously posted their own writing in the Birmingham newspaper denouncing the direct action of protesting as “untimely” amongst other complaints(King). By jailing King and publishing a criticism of the actions in which King led, the city leaders and clergyman created a platform for King to reach an audience much broader than to whom his letter is addressed. King uses the platform, to intelligently refute the claims of the clergymen, using the rhetorical devices of

When thinking of the civil rights movement of the '50s-'60s one name stands out. Martin Luther King Jr. was at the forefront of the fight for civil rights, leaving a lasting impact in many different ways; The "Letter From Birmingham Jail '' and "I have a Dream" speech as examples. Within these texts, King utilizes rhetorical devices to strengthen his argument, and better impact the audience with the work's purpose. King starts his letter by directing it toward the clergymen.

King used elegant way to attract more whites to his side. He showed them how he appreciated their suffering from police violence because they loved Negros. Also, King said that “I am afraid that it is much too long to take your precious time”. He handled the Ethos device to illustrate that their time is as important as the topic he was arguing

these letters Dr. King uses several more rhetoric devices such as use of emotional appeal known as “patho,” the appeal of ethics and authority or “ethos” and the aforementioned appeal to logic known as “logos.” Dr. King started directly responding to the criticism of

The criticism made by the these eight clergyman epitomize the idea of whiteness and white privilege. Rather than to offer assistance and guidance for King and his efforts to diminish racial injustices prevalent in the South, they, instead, offer criticism in an attempt to depreciate King’s fight for racial equity. This rhetoric has occurred often throughout American history, where we see white individuals devaluing and hindering the progress made by individuals of color. For example, one of the critiques that King received was that The Negro community should be more patient and wait for society to move gradually toward civil rights. What white individuals fail to understand is that there is no such thing

In “A Letter From A Birmingham Jail” Martin Luther King Jr defends his use of nonviolent protest in order to accomplish racial equality. In the letter, Dr. King uses ethos, diction, and allusions when defending nonviolent protest which makes his argument really strong. His goal is to make the clergymen help him fight racial equality. He uses ethos to build up credibility.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an American baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights Movement in 1954. He had a great impact on race relations in the U.S. and he made a great impact on many lives. He died in 1968. Dr. King wrote 2 famous works, “Dream” and “Birmingham” and each had a different audience and purpose. Both works utilizes the persuasive techniques of pathos in “Dream” and logos in “Birmingham.”

In paragraphs 33 to 44 of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s response to “A Call for Unity,” a declaration by eight clergymen, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963), he expresses that despite his love for the church, he is disappointed with its lack of action regarding the Civil Rights Movement. Through powerful, emotionally-loaded diction, syntax, and figurative language, King adopts a disheartened tone later shifts into a determined tone in order to express and reflect on his disappointment with the church’s inaction and his goals for the future. King begins this section by bluntly stating that he is “greatly disappointed” (33) with the church, though he “will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen” (33). By appealing to ethos and informing the audience of his history with the church, he indicates that he is not criticizing the church for his own sake, but for the good of the church.

His use of ethos, pathos, and logos, along with biblical references, religious rhetoric, and repetition, underscores the importance of persuasion in social activism. King's appeal to the better natures of Americans, his referencing of religion, and his use of a shared sense of history and responsibility; all of these elements attest to the power of well-crafted writing in inciting social

One rhetorical tool King uses in his letter is pronouns to address the audience. This rhetorical tool addresses a particular audience but it is not necessarily to persuade them at this point. King drops these rhetorical tools throughout the one of them "I am afraid that it is much too long to take, your precious time" (paragraph 5). King talks to the clergyman through this rhetorical tool and addresses them in different ways. King rates with a purpose his purpose is to persuade people and change their opinion on civil rights.