LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM CITY JAIL

Importance of Introduction

• Address Audience
• State Cause
• Show Attitude

"We will reach goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation" (page 180)

References to Current Events

• Connects to audience
• Gives deeper meaning
• Helps reader understand points

Greensboro Sit Ins

• Series of nonviolent protests in Greensboro, North Carolina 
• 4 students sat at "whites-only" counter at restauraunt
• Known as Greensboro Four
• Later more joined

"Young ministers of Gospel and a host of elders courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters" (page 182)

Rosa Parks

• Refused to move her seat so a white man could sit
• First Lady of Civil Rights
• The Mother of the Freedom Movement

"Symbolized in a 72 year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama who rose up... and decided not to ride the segregated buses" (page 181)

Chief Pritchett

• Police man who arrested King
• Stopped Albany movement
• Arrested many others at time
• Nonviolent, but still wrong

"Used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of flagrant racial injustice" (page 181)

Importance of Conclusion

• Leave reader with lasting impression
• State final points
• Give hope

"Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear- drenched communities" (page 182)

Class Analysis Time!

"You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so
diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather
strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, "How can you advocate breaking some laws and
obeying others?" The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I
would agree with St. Augustine that "An unjust law is no law at all." "

St. Augustine

• Lex iniusta non est lex
• Used by Saint Thomas Aquinas
• Segregation was an unjust law
• Does not need to be obeyed
• Connects with Church audience

Supreme Court Decision of 1954

• Brown V. Board of Education
• Segregation in public school is unconsitutional
• Overturned Plessy V. Ferguson
• Unanimous decision (9-0)
• Just law, can be obeyed