Paper Summary:

The paper illustrates how Martin Luther King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail" is steeped in the notion of civil disobedience. The paper discusses King's four basic steps of a nonviolent campaign and his call for faith, the need to live authentically and for understanding the harshness of the world as a result of oppression in society.

From the Paper:

"The letter is steeped in the notion of civil disobedience, and this is also where the crux of the notion of coming to terms with dying becomes the qualifier King gives to live. King was living and writing in a time in which freedoms were denied his people on a daily basis and in so many ways. This brings out a natural and instinctive resentment in the human being, as a human reaction to injustice. This is, in effect, no way to live life. This then gives rise to the notion of being ready to die for freedom, for your rights, because living in slavery or oppression or injustice or any denial of freedom is no life at all, it is like being dead. That's what civil disobedience meant for African-Americans in King's day, a taking of one's life into their own hands. There was no way of knowing if one would be shot with a rubber or real bullet, beaten with a billy club, thrown in jail, or God knows what injustice or cruelty imposed on them. However, this was the risk all protesters knew they were taking when people like Dr. King called for a protest."

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