Poppy Jay
Professor Kanye West
English 111
10 December 2016

	Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is perhaps one of the most famous letters ever published. King was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama in 1962 after disobeying a judge’s order to cease protesting. While imprisoned, King wrote his letter as a direct response to clergymen who felt that civil disobedience was unwarranted and that action should only be taken in the courts. In his letter, King eloquently makes a compelling case in favor of his strategy of nonviolent resistance. Even 53 years later, King’s arguments continue to hold true.

King argues that it is not only right to disobey unjust laws, it is in fact a “moral responsibility”. King defines an unjust law as a law that “a majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself”. King is correct because laws that are applied only to certain groups do not fit the intended purpose of laws. Things are made illegal because we believe those things are detrimental to our society, and how can something be harmful when done by a black man but not when done by a white man? Unevenly applied laws are not put in place to benefit society, only the majority, and so they are inherently unjust. Some may argue that, regardless of how just they are, laws should not be broken and that the fight to eliminate them should happen in the courts. However, fully legal battles with no civil disobedience are doomed to failure.

	King makes the point that legal action does not work without a “nonviolent, constructive tension” created by nonviolent resistance. To illustrate, King recalls how, after successfully negotiating with Birmingham shopkeepers to take down racist signs, the signs were simply put back up again a few days later. This story shows why King’s argument is correct: negotiation cannot work if one side already has everything they want. An oppressor has no incentive to listen to the oppressed because, by definition, they are powerless. Therefore, an oppressed group must force the oppressor to listen by making themselves impossible to be ignored. This is why economic protests, like the Montgomery bus boycott or sit-ins, are often the most effective – it is impossible to ignore lost profits for very long. With continued civil disobedience, the oppressed give themselves leverage, making legal action far more likely to be successful.

	King also argues that extremism is not always a bad thing. He identifies the two extremes of black society – total complacency and black nationalism – and places himself in the middle. However, he calls himself an extremist, making the argument that it is right to be an extremist for love and justice. King’s point makes sense – should people be anything less than extremely against oppression and hatred? To be moderate and encourage compromise with hateful ideologies is to tacitly admit that their point of view has some merit. The segregationist movement would not have been satisfied with anything less than complete segregation, and when facing this type of extremism, some extremism is necessary.

	In short, King’s arguments in favor of civil disobedience are very persuasive. The strategies King used and wrote about were incredibly effective at ending segregation. Even today, however, many of the issues he discussed continue to be relevant. While we have made significant progress, there is still work to be done, and King’s work should stand as an example of how to peacefully bring about change.