freedom

p Letter From Birmingham Jail

In to understand the contents of the letter that the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr . wrote from Birmingham jail , we must first understand who Martin Luther King Jr . was , the history of racial segregation in the United States that brought about both silent and street protest from our African American brothers , as well as the letter from the clergymen for which the reverend composed a reply from within his Birmingham jail cell

Born on the 15th of January in 1929 , Martin Luther King was born into a

br family African American Baptist religious leaders . His grand father was the Reverend A .D . Williams , founder of the Atlanta chapter of the National Association of Colored People (NAACP )and pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church . Martin Luther King , Sr . later succeeded Rev Williams as pastor of the church . The Rev . Martin , Jr . was a man of peace . As an advocate of Mahatma Gandhi 's nonviolent methods of protest , he believed that social change could be dictated by non violence and direct action during an era when the United States of America was a misnomer as the country at the time supported and implemented segregation amongst the races . This was a political issue that dates all the way back to the slavery days of the country and was implemented even after the Thirteenth Amendment was passed as part of the Jim Crow Laws that states that any races that mixed and mingled risked being subjected to lawful punishment because the laws of the land did not permit members of different races to interact . Such laws were the basis of segregation as states like Alabama insisted on banning interracial marriages as well as insuring that the whites and blacks had separate areas in public places and transportation at all times . It was only a matter of time before the African Americans realized how their human rights were being trampled upon by these laws and they , as a race decided that it was time to request for equal rights from their white counterparts

The unlawfulness of segregation came to light during on the fateful day of December 5 ,1955 that Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white man as dictated by the segregation laws of Alabama . This led to the bus boycotts of 1995 after which the good reverend was elected to the presidency of the Montgomery Improvement Association . The transportation company boycott under his leadership lasted until 1956 when the Supreme Court acknowledged that the Alabama segregation laws were unconstitutional and led to the subsequent abolition of the law

On May 2 , 1962 , the reverend received an invitation to make a prayer rally appearance in Birmingham , Alabama . His participation at the event led to his subsequent arrest and imprisonment in the Birmingham Jail on April 16 , 1963 on charges of participating in a sit-in demonstration against segregated eating facilities . The battle against segregation was beginning to reach a feverish pitch at this point . The protests were beginning...