Refer to SOAPSTone to understand and identify the key elements of the letter. I've attached SOAPSTone for your reference.discuss each section and identify the rhetorical appeals used by MLK. For your...

One of the basic points in your statement is that our acts are untimely. Some have asked, "Why didn't you give the new
administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this inquiry is that the new administration must be prodded about
as much as the outgoing one before it acts. We will be sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Mr. Boutwell will bring the
millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is much more articulate and gentle than Mr. Conner, they are both
segregationists, dedicated to the task of maintaining the status quo. The hope I see in Mr. Boutwell is that he will be reasonable
enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from the devotees of
civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and
nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges
voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has
reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the
oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was "well timed" according to the timetable of
those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "wait." It rings in the
ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "wait" has almost always meant "never." It has been a tranquilizing
thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come
to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied." We have waited for more than
three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike
speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee
at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say "wait." But when you
have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen
hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast
majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when
you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she
cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes
when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little
mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when
you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, "Daddy, why do white people treat colored
people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable
corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs
reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you
are) and your last name becomes "John," and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are
harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to
expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of
"nobodyness" -- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs
over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding
despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.








































































































Letter From Birmingham Jail 3
YOU express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so
diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather
strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, "How can you advocate breaking some laws and
obeying others?" The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I
would agree with St. Augustine that "An unjust law is no law at all."
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made
code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To
put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that
uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because
segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a
false sense of inferiority. To use the words of Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, segregation substitutes an "I - it"
relationship for the "I - thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. So segregation is not only
politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is
separation. Isn't segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, an expression of his awful estrangement, his
terrible sinfulness? So I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court because it is morally right, and I can urge
them to disobey segregation ordinances because they are morally wrong.
Let us turn to a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that
is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other hand, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to
follow, and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.
Let me give another explanation. An unjust law is a code inflicted upon a minority which that minority had no part in enacting or
creating because it did not have the unhampered right to vote. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up the
segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout the state of Alabama all types of conniving methods are used to
prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties without a single Negro registered to vote, despite
the fact that the Negroes constitute a majority of the population. Can any law set up in such a state be considered democratically
structured?
These are just a few examples of unjust and just laws. There are some instances when a law is just on its face and unjust in its
application. For instance, I was arrested Friday on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong with an
ordinance which requires a permit for a parade, but when the ordinance is used to preserve segregation and to deny citizens the
First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and peaceful protest, then it becomes unjust.
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the
early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks before submitting to certain
unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil
disobedience.
We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in
Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany
during that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. If I lived in a Communist
country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying
these anti-religious laws.