A Letter From A Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King Juniors “A Letter From A Birmingham Jail” is a letter that is about the injustices and unequal treatment that Negros have faced in America for more than 340 years, and how it’s time now for them to receive the equal and fair treatment that they deserve. The leader of “The Civil Rights Movement” says in this excerpt from his letter that “freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.” He also talks about how for years now he’s heard the word “Wait”, and how every Negro knows the word wait, really just means “Never”. He knows that if they continue to wait for their God and constitutionally given rights that they will never receive them. He says that the only reason that white people are able to tell them to wait, is because they don’t know what the stinging dart of segregation feels like when you’re told you can’t sit at a certain lunch counter just to get a cup of coffee. He knows that it’s now time for them to rise up, and to quit waiting for their rights, it’s time for them to go out and work for them, to let people know that just because their skin color is different they still have the same rights as everyone else. Although I have no personal experiences with racism or segregation, I’ve always found it astonishing that segregation happened here in America, that we took away the rights of human beings and citizens of America just because their skin color wasn’t white, even though our own Declaration of Independence states “That all men are created equal” and “That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. It boggles me how morally wrong it was, but also that it was lawfully wrong as well, but yet the amount of people standing up to do something about it was so small. Another thing that the letter was about was that Dr. King wanted to bring an end to segregation, he says that it is segregations fault that his six year old daughter was already developing an unconscious bitterness towards white people. Again, although I have never had any personal experiences with these problems, I can’t help but to agree with this statement. There is no reason that a young, innocent little girl should feel bitterness towards someone, but I can only imagine that being told you can’t go somewhere or do something because of the color of your skin would make you dislike the people who can; whether you realize it or not. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an amazing and inspirational man who helped to lead one of the largest and most important social reforms in American History, without him and the legacy that he left behind, we can only imagine what the civil rights scene in America would look like.