After reading A Call for Unity and Letter from a Birmingham Jail, it made me reflect on things that I thought I already knew. I grew up believing that segregation was a product of racism. I imagined all the White people ganging up against the minorities and giving them no way out. This is somewhat true, but A Call for Unity gave me the impression that the eight clergymen who wrote and signed it felt sympathy for the African Americans and wanted to come to a common endpoint where everyone would be happy. They wanted to put problems into the hands of the government and court systems so it would put an end to the demonstrations and people could quit being hurt.
I guess they ignored the things they didn’t want to see or just had no idea what it was like to be Black. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail stated that the things that were happening had to be done. Not only did it seem that the African Americans were forced into most of those situations, but the law enforcement personnel who were supposed to “end” the fighting, were often the ones right in the middle of it. The state government wanted King’s demonstrations to be delayed until a more suitable time, but there was really no other better time. King wrote, “For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait’ It rings in the ear of every Nefro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
Although the two groups thought differently about how things should end, they agreed that things should be solved nonviolently. King was a great example of the Black community of the 1960s, using his words instead of violence, he instigated a change that will forever be remembered.
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