Ethos Pathos Logos In Letter From Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King went to jail for protesting for blacks in Birmingham in 1963. During the early starts of the civil rights movement he wrote a letter while in jail addressing the criticism people showed towards him who should have known better to not bash him in negative ways. It is known that the Birmingham Letter was the most important letter documented in the civil rights era. The letter provided as a long road to freedom in a civil rights movement. In this letter there are three appeals shown in the text. One appeal is known as Ethos. Ethos means to convince the audience of the authors work or character. Pathos is another appeal which is intended to persuade an audience which has to relate to their emotions. The third one is logos which appeals to logic also known to convince an audience by the use of reason.

Every text has many ways to connect with the reader. The main ways of getting the reader is by using these three elements: pathos, logos, and ethos. The text Letter from Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King Jr. is no exception. He was able to use all three in his letter to spread his message. The purpose of the letter was to to defend his non-violent movement. I feel this piece is effective, because he wrote inside a jail and was able to maintain his composure.

Dr. King uses different argument tools to persuade and move his audience, including the use of logos and pathos. These tools are used to convince the audience of a certain point of view as well as stir the audience’s emotions. Dr. King is a very powerful speaker and uses many tools to further defend his argument. While Dr. King uses both of these tools, I believe that he uses more of one tool than that of another. These tools are also similar in adding meaning to the words, but different in the way they add this meaning.

Segregation is the action or state of setting someone or something apart from other people or things or being set apart. The conflict between the years 1880-1960s, the U.S. faced segregation. Many lives were lost and war broke out because of racism. In his letter “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Martin Luther King Jr. writes a response to the clergymen of Birmingham, Alabama. King uses the Aristotelian method with ethos, pathos, and logos to persuade the clergymen and the rest of Birmingham; Kings strongest arguments had to go to ethos and pathos because he advertises the fight black people faced, along with the mention of religious characters.

In Dr king’s speech he uses both logos and pathos. In his speech Dr king uses logical information to explain how racism is becoming a major deal in America.“We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakaborrors of police brutality”(King 263)The quote appealed to his aquince be telling them how bad the black community is being treated. On the other hand Dr king also uses pathos

Martin Luther King use logos and repetition to make his argument come across better and reinforce his main ideas in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. An example of logos is when he said “We can never forget everything Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’…It was ‘illegal’ to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany” (King 8). King states the fact that Hitler performed “legal” things and helping Jews was “illegal”. We know as Americans that Hitler did terrible things that should not have been legal. The Americans at the time knew that as well and King was comparing that the legal laws of the time were just as cruel and racist as the laws Hitler enforced. King also uses repetition to prove his point, by repeating “I don’t believe you would have

Dr. Martin Luther King wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in response to seven clergymen who misinterpreted peaceful protests by the Southern Christian Leadership. Dr. King, being the president of the Southern Christian Leadership, organized these peaceful protests for part of the black community of Alabama, which were desperate for change. King’s definitive goal for his letter to the clergymen was to explain what he, and majority of the blacks in Alabama, were experiencing. He wanted to give them insight on the actuality of the amount of oppression received by blacks from whites, including the police officers that were ultimately supposed to enforce legal equality. The clergymen claimed that Dr. King and his colleagues were outsiders that had no real business in Birmingham, Alabama. In King’s response, he counters by stating the reason for his appearance. He states that he was invited to Birmingham by the Alabama Christian Movement, on behalf of the African Americans that resided there. He went to Birmingham to confront the racial injustices that lived there. He and his associates had peaceful marches and sit-ins in order to gain the attention of the white community; however, their gatherings and protests, not approved by the city, were unpermitted, thus against the law. King acknowledges that they were breaking a law, but the fact that blacks were being so mistreated by whites caused him to make the sacrifice of disregarding that unjust law in order to gain the oppressor’s attention. He also argues that people of color should be able to have a peaceful protest, and should be supported by the rest of the community because they are protesting equality and justice. Dr. King argued that the Birmingham government failed to compromise with the African American community on rights that they were very much entitled to. After witnessing this firsthand, he acknowledged the clergymen to clarify his intentions, as well as to address the amount of obvious oppression that blacks were forced to face.

Letters to Birmingham Jail is written by Martin Luther King Jr as a response to eight clergymen who criticize his public protests. They argue that his actions are counter-productive to his movement and pose a potential threat to law and order. This letter expresses King’s feelings towards injustice that has occurred and also explains the unjust events happening in both Birmingham and the rest of America. King defends his legitimacy of breaking the law through nonviolent protests in an act against segregation and racism and insists that these protests were necessary for progression. He also alludes to many notable thinkers such as Jesus and Socrates to aid in the reasonings of his actions. King states that these demonstrations were bound to

As you may know, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was a very persuasive and opinionated man. In order to achieve this, he used two main types of persuasive appeals in his most famous work, “I Have a Dream” speech and his “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” These appeals are known as logical and emotional appeals. Also known as logos and pathos. King’s usage of logos are just as effective to readers as his usage of pathos. When he uses them, they make readers/listeners even more confident in believing his argument.

“Letters from Birmingham” is a letter that was written by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963. He wrote the letter after getting arrested in Birmingham, Alabama to defend his protests against racial segregation. His audience was the clergymen who disliked and criticized the protests. King conveys many messages throughout his letter. His three major points cover direct action, unjust laws, and waiting.

On April 16, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote what has become known as the “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” A long document, it was addressed to Birmingham’s local clergymen because they had been critical of his work and ideas. Dr. King believed their criticism was in good faith, and pointed out that he was in Birmingham because he had been invited by the local affiliate of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, showing the religious commonalities between himself and the clergymen. However, his presence in Birmingham was not only, or even primarily, because of the invitation, but rather because he felt there was such terrible racial injustice in Birmingham that it merited national attention. Dr. King explained that although he

Over half a century has passed since civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” in 1963. He wrote his letter towards the Alabama clergymen, but he published it publicly. In his letter, Dr. King addresses injustice, segregation, and police brutality towards African Americans. Knowing that the public will read his letter, Dr. King makes sure he can relate, understand, and elaborate on the African-American conflicts and worries of never reaching the goals they want, civil rights, unity between African Americans and whites and the end of racism. Dr. King use rhetorical appeals, mainly pathos to progress from injustices towards African--Americans. There are a few quotes that shape the letter in my perspective, they form the relation between the author and the reader in order to bring about change.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lived in the South when segregation was a part of everyday life. Segregation set African American people apart from the rest of society. In response to the horrific acts of segregation, King decided to change the operations of the South. Most people associate King as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and head of the Civil Rights Movement (2). Because of his leadership, Dr. King organized and lead marches, sit ins, and several other nonviolent protests (10). Also, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote several profound pieces of literature. The “Letter From Birmingham Jail” is one of Dr. King’s most famous pieces. This letter was written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from his jail cell in Birmingham,

In the sixth paragraph of Dr. King’s letter, he states “Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than any other city in the nation.” The following statement talks about how these are the facts about the condition of the area. This factual statement is a form of logos, cleverly added in by Dr. King along with several other examples of logos, to persuade the readers with the facts of the case. The facts go on to prove the unfairness that is being distributed to the blacks in this community. Seeing how bad the situation is by looking at the information starts to get readers thinking about how to change it for the better.

Logos is used in literature to prove a statement or argument with logic or reasoning. King uses logic in his letter through his words and his actions. “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Klu Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice.” He is saying that the white moderate who does not believe in establishing justice should get ready for a dogfight, because the blacks are not going to back down. The whites were trying to get the blacks segregated from them in Birmingham, just because of the color of their skin. Segregation was where the whites and blacks could not use the same facilities in public or anywhere