Letter from Birmingham Jail

Running head: English 101 Module 1 Case

ENGLISH 101 MODULE 1 CASE

TRIDENT UNIVERSITY

Letter from Birmingham Jail

By Martin Luther King, Jr.

From the Birmingham jail, where he was imprisoned as a participant in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation,

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote in longhand the letter which follows. In his response to a public statement of concern and caution issued by some white religious leaders of the South. Dr. King, who was born in 1929, attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received his B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.

In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong advocate for civil rights for people of colored, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation.

As a minister and a social activist, he dedicated his life and led the “Civil Right Movement” in

the 1950s.

As a result of his involvement and leadership, legal segregation of African Americans in the

South and other parts of the United State of American were abolished.

Dr. King was powerful with word; he combined wisdom, logic and truth telling, which made him

a force to reckon with.

When you read his letter; “Letter...