Letter From Birmingham Jail

“Letter from Birmingham Jail” is considered by many to be a masterpiece of American essay writing and political rhetoric. King’s adept handling of persuasive appeals and his interventions in the representation of the stakeholders in the struggle for civil rightsallowed him to introduce the Civil Rights Movement to a national audience that may well have had negative perceptions of it.

King uses appeals to emotion, reason, and character/authority tostake out a stronger position for the protestors. King uses appeals to emotion throughout the essay to dramatize the impact of segregation and racism on African-Americans and to humanize them, an important task given the lack of knowledge or misinformation about African-Americans that would have dominated popular culture of the day.King also uses appeals to reason and facts to support his case. For example, King outlines the steps for using nonviolent direct action (87) and then systematically explains how the SCLC and ACMHR followed each of the steps before protesting, thus countering accusations from the ministers (and a national audience) that the protests were ill-timed. Finally, King relies on figures like Jesus and the apostles to establish a precedent for his involvement in seeminglysecular affairs, a move that helps him to establish credibility.

The other major task King had to accomplish in writing “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was an intervention in the way he, the movement he led, and the footsoldiers of that movement—protestors—were represented. Many readers would have seen segregation as a regional problem, and others would even have viewed King’s politics with suspicion in the context of the Cold War.

King uses a multipronged approach to reach these readers. First, he uses the concept of the “interrelatedness of all communities and states” (87)to provide a rationale for his engagement in seemingly local affairs,and that creates a rationale for the national audience’s involvement as well.

King also consistently writes the protests into a narrative that reimagines American history as centuries of oppression and describes contemporary efforts to agitate for change as part of an American tradition of civil disobedience in the service of liberty. By recasting the history of racial oppression as a 340-year old problem, as opposed to a decades-old struggle inspired by agitators, King presents protest as a long overdue response. King’s portrayal of protestors as patriotic also counters the accusation that there was something un-American about their activities.

1963, the year of the protests, was one year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, which raised fears of nuclear annihilation from Soviet missiles parked in Cuba. In the context of this atmosphere, King’s emphasis on social justice (a concern of Communist ideology),his willingness to break laws, and his power to inspire others to do the same opened him to both sincere and disingenuous accusations that the Civil Rights Movement was a covert effort by the Soviet Union to destabilize the U.S. The accusation had to be countered to sway this suspicious national audience. His self-representation as a man of God whose politics is grounded in Christian faith and African-American protestors as the embodiment of American and Christian ideals are specific interventions designed to put Cold War suspicions to rest.

King also intervenes in the representation of other political players in American politics to show that the belief that segregation will gradually end on its own is deeply flawed and not at all moderate. It mistakenly assumes the choice is between continued segregation and gradual integration. King’s focus on black nationalists, whom he sees as dangerous actors capable of leveraging African-American discontent to create a “racial nightmare” (101) of violence, is designed to show that the choice is between violent revolt and nonviolent protest, and that it will be impossible to restrain the former if urgent action is not taken. In presenting nonviolent protest as a moderate, third way, Kingtransforms himself into a figure of moderation, represents African-Americans as agents in their own political fate, andpoints whites—especially moderates—toward a greater evil that could unfold, should they not allow more moderate forms of protest.

King’s interventions in representations of himself, African-Americans, and white moderates, coupled with his skillful use of persuasive appeals,serve to convince the audience that the protests in Birmingham are justified and part of a deeply American movement that is needed now.