University of Utah Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr Summary
Can you help me understand this Literature question?
Read “Letter from a Birmingham Jail (Links to an external site.)” by the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. For your notes, draft a one-paragraph summary.
King wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in 1963 after being arrested while participating in protests against racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. The letter is addressed, “Dear My Fellow Clergymen,” and King is specifically responding to the eight white clergymen who authored “A Call for Unity,” in which they acknowledged racial injustices but condemned civil rights demonstrations and called on activists to negotiate with local authorities and pursue their concerns in court instead of protesting. In his letter, King makes a cogent and compelling defense of civil disobedience. (Links to an external site.)
Both “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and “A Call for Unity” were open letters, a genre of writing in which a letter (which may or many not be addressed to a specific reader) is intended to be read by a wide audience. For example, although King addresses his letter directly to the eight clergymen who “called for unity,” and although he makes specific appeals to these eight readers, he is also making arguments that he hopes reach a broader readership. His letter was first published in the monthly magazine, Liberation, and was subsequently published in many other venues. (In a way, it went “viral”–but of course this was before the era of internet and social media.)
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