In Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” he explains the injustices that occur throughout the United States but especially in city of Birmingham. King and his followers are preparing for direct action because they have gathered facts about ongoing injustices in Birmingham and city officials refuse to negotiate and when they agree, they do not comply. Now the process of self-purification has begun to educate oneself and realize what will happen next. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay King is not just addressing his fellow priests but everyone because he says “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” “All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality” and what King means is that one person is invalidly superior and the other inferior. The soul of African Americans would be distorted and their personalities would be damaged and anyone who caused this would get a false enhancement of their personality. This is creating emotional and psychological pain that would scar a person for the rest of their life and change drastically. It is morally wrong, and King urges civil disobedience of segregation to the greatest extent possible. Compare the year 1963 to earlier times when Adolf Hitler legally killed Jews but it was illegal to help them in Germany. King states that since it was morally right to help and comfort a Jewish person in need, he would do so even if the law says otherwise and it is unfair at the time. This clearly states that it is acceptable to civilly disobey the law because it is morally correct to do so. King agrees with St. Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all,” for example the “outside agitator idea” which means if you are not from here you cannot live here. Everything that affects a single person in this country affects everyone, one way or another. “Birmingham is probably the most segregated city in the United States.” King also argues that just because injustices happening in Birmingham doesn't mean they aren't happening elsewhere. This ongoing question about injustice is just one of the big picture problems. He's trying to explain to everyone that this is connected to racial injustice nationwide, not just in the city of Birmingham. There are unsolved bombings, unjust treatment, unsolved bombings in churches and homes going on in Birmingham and these are the facts. “Now is the time to lift our national politics from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity” King argues and believes that the national system is in quicksand and wants everyone to get out of it and shine a light on it. “We have waited more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights,” King states forcefully of what they have been through. King provides almost an entire page of examples of what African Americans have gone through because of people who never experienced segregation and continue to delay their basic civil rights and continue to say “wait.” He's saying now is too much and there's no better time to do it than now. King and his followers have tried to negotiate but city officials refuse to do so. They understood what will happen next and began to organize for direct action. King is trying to create an uneasy atmospheric pressure for city officials to make change happen already. All King is trying to do is open the door to negotiation. In the letter from prison of.
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