Rhetorical Techniques in “Letter From Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Essay

Introduction

In April 1963, Negro demonstrations took place in Birmingham under the leadership of Martin Luther King. Eight clerics from different religions issued an open letter to King asking him to stop the demonstrations. In their message, they advocated obedience to court decisions on racial issues, criticized visitors for organizing demonstrations, and praised the “calm actions” of the police and authorities during them. Luther refused to end the peaceful demonstrations and was sent to prison, where he wrote his answer to the clergymen. His speech Letter from Birmingham Jail had an immense impact on the Civil Rights movement and the issue of racial discrimination in America.

Main body

In his speech, King used a variety of rhetorical techniques to convince not only the clergymen but the rest of the American people too. He expertly appeals to ethos with credibility, pathos for emotions, and logos as reasoning. With these tools, King succeeded in conveying his idea of injustice towards the Black people to Americans, thus gaining the necessary support for the Civil Rights movement. Different forms of rhetorical appeal helped him to provide strong argumentation with both factual and subjective information, which only served to increase the credibility of his speech. In this part of his speech, he applies parallelism: “When you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will; when you have seen hate-filled policemen kill your black brothers and sisters?” (2). There, he continues to use “when you” to highlight the myriad ways the Blacks are mistreated by society.

This expert use of such symbolic tool as parallelism truly gets the audience, as it emphasizes the endless struggle the Blacks have to face. Moreover, the repetition provides a feeling as if it is something common for them, a routine they have no choice but to endure. Then, there are brilliant metaphors in King’s writing, such as “the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society” (2). With this metaphor, King beautifully creates a mental image for his audience – a picture of oppression that never ends. The Blacks have to watch helplessly as the White people get all the freedoms and privileges simply because they have the “right” skin color, while the Blacks have no hope of getting any. In addition, his metaphor of an airtight cage works as a representation of the dehumanization of the Blacks as animals without any rights to claim.

It is easy to see King’s argumentation as more credible and strong than the claims of the clergymen because he has more than enough personal experience of the oppression the Blacks suffer from. His flawless use of metaphors and parallelism allows the reader or the audience to empathize with King and support him in his fight against racial injustice. Moreover, an appeal to pathos also helps King to capture the attention of his audience through an emotional connection to everything the Black people went through throughout the history of the country. King explores and explains his own experiences of injustice, violence, and oppression with clarity and raw emotion. Thus, his audience gets the opportunity to see the issue for what it is, understand it, and, by understanding it, adhere to King’s views rather than the clergymen’s.

Discrimination and segregation are the processes that impact everyone’s lives, not only the Blacks. King explains this to his audience with these words: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (1). It might seem that race is the center point of the injustice, but in reality, it affects everyone, especially in the late XX century. No nation can truly develop and prosper if part of it is oppressed. Dr. King examines the impact of segregation and racism on society as a union, thus making his audience able to see the barriers that stand in the way of the future. Pathos is the ultimate tool that King uses to make the people understand his point of view, which allows them, in turn, to sympathize with those who experience this injustice on a daily basis.

Such appeal to emotions and basic humanity made it possible for King to achieve strong support for the Civil Rights movement, as well as his own actions. For clergymen and the entire American nation to believe and support his arguments, King had to have the strongest factual and logical basis. That is where logos comes into the picture, with King’s words: “There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in this nation” (1). With the harsh truth about the violence spreading steadily in Birmingham, King establishes a strong logical base for his arguments, which, in turn, greatly improves the credibility of his speech.

Conclusion

During the 1960s, Martin Luther King was one of the key speakers and the most influential figure of the Civil Rights movement. With his many speeches, he effectively conveyed to the American nation the issue of racial injustice toward Black people. He advocated for peaceful protests that were crucial to the movement and explained the necessary actions needed to be taken in order to establish equality in the United States. The rhetorical tools allowed him to bring his ideas into the light with a strong base of argumentation, logic, and emotional appeal. Expert, comprehensive use of ethos, pathos, and logos provided his speeches with all the rhetorical strength and emphasis he needed to make his audience understand his views – and, more importantly, agree with them. Without his Letter from Birmingham Jail, there would be considerably less influence behind the Civil Rights movement it needed to make any substantial changes.

Work Cited

King, Martin Luther, Jr. Letter from the Birmingham Jail. Harper San Francisco, 1994.