Does Martin Luther King Use Ethos In Letter From Birmingham Jail

In this analysis ,”Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King’s was exhibiting his skills in the usage of Ethos, Logos ,and Pathos to respond to his fellow Clergymen who blamed him for organizing the blacks to demonstrate and make the whole world aware of how they are been treated in the Birmingham community. After reading King’s letter I have realized that he was such a passionate and strong man who was able to fight to the end to achieve his goal, had it not because of his actions the injustice will still be going on in this country up till now. Despite everything his opponents do to bring him down, he still stood strong to fight for the black community. I was also impressed about his work of art and the choice of words that he uses to make his letter a success. After I finished reading the essay I felt sad for him going to jail and the punished he experienced over there, but it takes one person’s sacrifice to save the rest.

Martin Luther King Jr. skillfully uses ethos throughout his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In paragraph two, he establishes credibility by writing, “I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference." The SCLC is a legitimate organization that has organized nonviolent resistance against racism in the south, and by saying that he leads this group King is implying that he is in a position to where he can be trusted. Throughout the letter King repeatedly establishes his ethos to his target audience, the white clergymen from “A Call for Unity”, by referencing to important biblical figures such as Jesus Christ and Apostle Paul. In paragraph three, King compares his work on the Civil Rights Movement with the

Martin Luther King letter from a Birmingham Jail has been one of the most powerful text that I had ever come cross during my time in school. When I started reading it, I just couldn’t stop and contained my excitement of how much truth and power lies behind every word. It is very sad that this racial issue that happened so long ago is still happening among us. Is not a secret that racial discrimination still exists up to today. What is crazy is that not only people are still being judged by their skin color but by their ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic class. As an aspiring social worker to be I do hope that one day we can live in a society where there’s no prejudice and everyone is treated equally, but that day seems very far away.

Topic: Read Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (in your Nexus book) and Brent Staples’s “Black Men and Public Space.” What do these works say about racism, prejudice, and bias? Have we made any progress in these areas since their publication? What problems do you still see and what solutions can you offer?

Rhetoric is the ancient art of dispute and discourse in which devices are used to manipulate language and efficiently convey the author’s message to the reader. In the “Public Statement by Eight Alabama Clergymen” and the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr., various strategies and styles are used to classify the speaker’s appeal to the audience. Pathos, ethos, and logos are effectively and ultimately achieved through the use of figurative language, allusion, and sentence structure.

Letter from Birmingham was a response to the Clergymen in Alabama with concerns on how black people were not going to wait any longer. They have been oppressed and will not be disrespected any longer. The law states that the "separate but equal" act will consider black people the same as white people, just that they will not share common grounds. King uses pathos to appeal to the Clergymen and addresses how they will be separated and looked down upon. King argues that black people have been mistreated due to the despotism of white people, they have been waiting for more than 300 years and will not wait any longer.

In Martin Luther Kings “Letter from Birmingham Jail” he is writing to the eight white religious leaders who had put him in jail. In 1963 black people were not afforded the same rights as white people. They would be put in jail for different things and menial things as where a white person wouldn't go to jail. Dr. King is in jail because the religious leader had caught him parading without a permit. So Martin Luther King uses logos, pathos, and ethos as a way to connect to his audience. He makes a connection to better make his audience know who he is and what credibility he has. He mostly hits out religious tones throughout the letter because that is what the eight white religious leaders mostly understand the best.

During the Civil Rights Movement in the mid 1960’s one of the most well- known civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested and was placed into a jail in Birmingham Alabama for eleven days (Westbrook 1). Martin Luther King did not commit a crime that was in violation of any law in the U.S Constitution. King was arrested for taking a direct action for the Black community that was harassed and judged every day for there color of their skin. In King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail on the 16th of April 1963 he illuminates the daily brutality on the streets of Alabama, and focuses his argument on the church and christians for ignoring their moral obligation to their community. Christians and followers of God worship the Holy Bible

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter and a story based on a speech, I Have a Dream and Letter From Birmingham Jail, both of which were very strong and appealing to the the audience for diffrent reasons. Although they were both alluring to the audience in their own ways his story I Have a Dream was stronger. Dr. King used pathos very strongly in his I Have a Dream speech persuading people with his charged language and powerful word choice The use of pathos in both the letter and the speech relates the reader and draws them in.

Martin Luther King preached the realities of what justice truly is. Nearly 50 years later our world is still having trouble with these ideas. There is no doubt that Martin Luther King was an extremely virtuous man. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, had a Ph.D. in systematic theology, was a baptist minister, and was probably the most recognized person in the civil rights movement. He was assassinated in 1968. The incident as described by Thich Nhat Hanh; "I couldn 't believe it. I thought the American people had produced a king, but are not capable of preserving him".

Human being are not cold blooded animal and nobody is definitely indifferent. Therefore, authors always write down words to arouse readers’ enthusiasm or fervor gradually. Pathos work as the same way, which let readers get moved by emotion weapon. We can find many pathos devices in this well-known speech. “The real hero of this struggle is the American Negro. His actions and protests, his courage to risk safety and even to risk his life, have awakened the conscience of this nation. His demonstrations have been designed to call attention to injustice, designed to provoke change, designed to stir reform. He has called upon us to make good the promise of America. And who among us can say that we would have made the same progress were it not for his persistent bravery, and his faith in American democracy.” From these great words, Johnson described the American Negro as a hero, who had awakened the conscience of this nation. There is no doubt that many people were neutral in this case. However, after that speech, after being persuaded by their president, they might turn to agree with their president. Some of them might give up their prejudices to Negroes. They would recall many Negroes who were used to live with them were also kind and gave their hands sometimes. Pathos work in that way. Authors utilize pathos to tough readers and audiences, like what I have mentioned, everyone has the milk of human kindness. Take text for example again, “This great, rich, restless country can offer opportunity and education and hope to all, all black and white, all North and South, sharecropper and city dweller. These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease.” These impressed words reminded all the people of that USA belonged to everyone. They should be unity to stop poverty, ignorance, disease not discriminate not our fellow man, not our neighbor. This pathos improved this

Martin Luther King Jr. starts off the letter by stating that he is writing this letter from inside Birmingham jail to address some of the concerns raised by the eight clergymen in their statement denouncing nonviolent protests. He says that he does not often respond to criticism but would like to respond to these criticisms because of the sincerity with which they were expressed and because he thinks that they have good intentions. He then rebuts the statement that he is an outsider by describing his connections to Alabama as the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which operates within the state. He explains that he came to the state because of injustice there and which is, because of the interrelatedness of cities and

The frustration and convincing tones that Martin Luther King Jr. uses in "Letter from Birmingham Jail," are shown through out his form of writing. King uses and emotional approach to send a convincing attitude towards his argument when he uses phrases such as, "strong in faith" and "as fellow clergyman and a christian brother," to get the attention of the audience convincing them that they are the same, Christians, and that he talks from the heart. The form of writing King uses is long and with nearly no pauses. This highlights his frustration and almost urgency to get his statement across, "let us all hope [...] love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty." He does not pause in this sentence revealing

Throughout his speech Dr. King used ethos, or an ethical appeal to convince his audience that he was an authority figure worth listening to. He uses his profound knowledge of history to show that things were not fair for the Negro people. He praises the founders of our nation by referring to the Declaration of Independence stating, “This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This statement that he makes no only shows the crowd that he is a knowledgeable person, it lets them see him as an authority figure because he is saying that

On April 16, 1963, King wrote his “Letter From Birmingham Jail” which not only became the most important document in the civil war era, but it also focused on how the colored were having a difficult time trying to end injustice and have the freedom of equality. August 28, 1983, the day Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his I Have A Dream speech, a date in which the hope of all African Americans rose, and the eyes of many opened to see the reality of the world. Throughout the works of Martin Luther King, he conveyed logos and pathos in every way in order to reach out to the hearts of many and show what the true meaning of brotherhood is in a nation with freedom.