03.08 Organize and Develop Your Ideas.

I. The thing that makes King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” powerful and effective is he
uses each paragraph to further provide evidence for why the church should take a stand
against racial injustice.
II. First of all one of the reasons King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is so powerful is his
use metaphors to help enhance his paragraphs and connect with the reader.
a) Martin Luther King states in his letter, “There comes a time when the cup of
endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss
of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair.”
b) This explains that through his metaphors he express more emotion and
experience then if he just stated it bluntly. Using a metaphor makes the reader
c) In King’s “Letter from Birmingham” he uses a metaphor to compare: ”In those
days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and
principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of
society.”
d) In this quote he says how the church used to use it power to help stop racial
injustice it has stopped doing that and just accepted the racial discrimination. By
using figurative language to help understand an emotion that may have been
hard to understand otherwise.
III. Moving on a second reason that King’s letter is effective is he has a clear intention his
whole letter and uses events from that time period to validate his intention to stop
racial injustice.
a) In his letter King talks about how he was arrested on a Friday for parading without a
permit, when in reality him and some other African Americans were protesting the
government. Violating their First Amendment privileges of peaceful assembly, thus
making his imprisonment unjust.
b) This suggests that he uses that fact that he was wrongfully imprisoned to try and
persuade the church that racial injustice is never going to go away unless they take a
stand.
a. It also clear from the statement, “Birmingham is probably the most
thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality
is known in every section of this country.”
c) This shows that even though they have constantly tried to peacefully protest, police still
continue to wrongly prosecute many people. In this quote king tries to show the church
how wrong it is for society to look down on them as a people and they must rise up.