Lee, Gloria: Diversity

In response to the letter, A Call for Unity, written by eight white clergymen, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the Letter from Birmingham Jail. In it he expressed his concern over the injustice existing in the community and justified the nonviolent protests he was leading. His letter reminds us of how in the past injustice pervaded our nation and how African Americans were treated with disdain and contempt. His letter was written in the most calming yet poignant language, get aroused emotion and logic causing readers' heads to nod.

At a first glance, A Call for Unity seems quite logical. It is written with sophisticated language which seems to advocate nonviolence to preserve the peace of the community. However, therein lies the illogic within the sea of logic. The clergymen call for people to meet “with their knowledge and experience of the local situation” when in reality, the voices of African Americans were utterly ignored. The clergymen said their voices should be presented in court and not on the streets. They criticized the demonstrators and argued that problems must be solved through the justice system. However, in most cases, there was not even a chance for an African American to win a case in court.

King then responds through his long letter by asserting that what he has done through the demonstrations was necessary and unavoidable in times of injustice. It was a means to be heard in a nonviolent way; it was a means to gain back what they had owned but lost. King asserts with great passion that injustice cannot be tolerated any longer while so many Black people face segregation and see their God-given rights taken away.

We could learn from history that people always try to justify the status quo in order to give themselves a sense of security. In the past, people justified slavery with false logic; in the days of segregation, people justified it with the same type of false logic. How could people call for unity while they discriminated and enforced segregation rules all around the nation? While history tends repeat itself, the history of segregation and injustice should never be repeated again.