Martin Luther King Jr. Letter to the Clergymen of Alabama (Coursework Sample)

Student Name Lecturer’s Name Course Name and Number Date Submitted Response: Martin Luther King Jr. Letter to the Clergymen of Alabama This response is an answer to a letter exchange between the Alabam Clergymen and Martin Luther King during his term in Birmingham City Jail. In the first latter, the Clergymen of Alabama were reaching out to Martin Luther King Jr. asking him to end the peaceful demonstration that sorted to end racial segregation that was at unexpected heights in Alabama. In the letter, the group called Martin Luther King Jr.'s arrangement untimely, unreasonable, and unlawful. The clergymen contending that honest conviction in racial issues should be pursued in a more organized form, such as through courts, and that the decision of the court should be obeyed. They labeled Martin Luther King Jr.'s interventions in matters of Alabama as foreign interference and urged him to obey the court's decision in the meantime by stopping public demonstrations (King 4). This paper supports Martin Luther King Jr.’s argument that “freedom is never voluntarily given” and that the oppressed must demand it from the oppressor. PEACEFUL DEMONSTRATIONS AS A COMMON REQUIREMENT IN THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM AND EQUALITY That the Clergyman of Atlanta considered negotiating the rights of the Negros after the peaceful campaign is a clear show that such methods are effective especially when pursuing the rights of the oppressed. In their letter to Martin Luther King Jr. (12th April 1963), the Clergymen of Alabama contended that Martin Luther Jr.'s conviction had opened an opportunity for increased forbearance and readiness to face facts and that the racial friction hand brought unrest upon Birmingham, paving the way for a realistic and constructive approach (negotiations) to issues of racial discrimination. In reply to this letter, Martin Luther King Jr. argued that the peaceful demonstrations were by no means untimely because the Negro community had waited 340 years for the issue of racial segregation to be addressed. He argued that the demonstration was arranged to take place on Easter holidays –a time when most people would be going shopping- to draw the attention of the business community to the matter. He also contended that being a leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference – centred in Atlanta, Georgia- did not deter him from paying attention and getting involved in racial segregation that ailed Alabama, since they had local affiliates at Birmingham. He condemned the church for not standing for black people even in the face of police brutality and blatant racial discrimination and argued that the privileged (the white people) could not give up their privileges voluntarily (King 2). Secondly, history reveals that independence was mostly, if not always, attained through mass action and in extreme contexts, violence. Even though Slavery in the US was put to an end in the 19th century, institutionalized racial discrimination against African Americans continued for many years (Anderson & Bolden, 2019). Towards the middle of the 20th century, African Americans were still expected to use designated schools and public utilities; which were typically inferior to the ones designated for the whites. African Americans faced discrimination in housing and employment as well as lynching and abuse from whites and they were incapable of exercising their civil rights. For many years, civil rights activism was the only vehicle that would place African Americans on a trajectory to attaining equality in the US. Activism had led to various victories in American history, including the Supreme Court's decision in Board of Education v. Brown (1954), which rendered unconstitutional the requirement that white and black students attend separate schools (Anderson & Bolden). Groups seeking to get their voice heard are advised to follow four major steps that are meant to bring controllable levels of destabilization that diverts the attention of the oppressor towards the cry of the oppressed, i.e., (i) gathering of facts to identify the presence of injustice, (ii) neg...