Martin Luther King was the leader of aa non-violent civil rights protest. King was arrested and in Birmingham Jail after leading this protest. While in Jail, he was given a newspaper containing “A Call for Unity”, which was a letter directed at King written by Alabama clergy men. This letter contained many criticisms and critics of King and his work as a civil rights activist. The letter mainly focused on how the clergymen believed his protest was untimely and inappropriate. King being a clergymen himself and also strongly believing in what he protested for, decides to write a response to these eight Alabama clergymen while in Birmingham Jail. Martin Luther King Jr. employs ethos to allow his audience to trust him, he uses logos to support his idea and feelings with concrete evidence, and King finally uses pathos to persuade his readers to feel compassion for his fellow African Americans and civil rights activists.
The Merriam Webster Dictionary describes ethos as “the distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution”. More simply ethos is credibility of an author shown through education and life experience. In the Letter from Birmingham Jail Martin Luther King Jr. uses rhetorical appeal of ethos to establish his credibility throughout the letter. He simply begins the letter by saying, “my dear fellow clergymen” (King 1). His choice of words puts King on the same platform as the clergymen. King himself was actually a local clergyman in Alabama. Martin Luther King Jr. goes on to say, “I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently, we share staff, educational, and financial resources with our affiliates.”(King 1) This introduction of himself and what he does and has accomplished establishes the credibility he needs for the letter so it is not looked upon as a pathological defense. HE has credibility because of the work and research he has done not because of his white privilege, in some ways he his saying he is better than the eight white clergymen who are criticizing him. While he says he is a clergyman himself along with them, he is also saying that he has done a lot more than that by standing up for injustice in this country. Stating credibility can help to create a well-developed argument, without the use of facts to support your causes, most readers will slide the work under the rug and discount it. This is not true for Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.
Logos is the use of facts to backup statements and beliefs. King uses this in his letter to validate his reasons for protest and continued work for the advancement of the civil rights movement. In his letter King begins to speak about laws and the difference between a “just law” and an “unjust law”. To summarize what King goes into grave detail about, a just law everyone should follow and he himself obeys and is there for a reason, an unjust law should and will be disobeyed and disobeying these laws is morally correct. King says, “We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal.’ It was ‘illegal’ to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.”(King 6) King brings up an excellent example on “just” and “unjust” laws. Everyone can agree that Hitler was morally incorrect in his actions, but he got away with is because it was legal for him to do so. This does not make what Hitler did just. By bringing this up King pushes the clergymen to think about what is morally right and morally wrong, not just what the law says. The clergymen also criticized King for being and extremist, this in most cases is looked at as a bad thing from every angle. King being a talented writer, is able to turn this statement around by using historical evidence and facts and states he is proud to be an extremist and honored by the title. To appeal to the clergymen, he uses Jesus Christ as an example. Jesus is the perfect example of an extremist and he was even killed for what h believed in, but we know what Jesus did was morally right, even though the law found him guilty of a crime. This appeal to logos proves that an extremists view is not always the bad view, in many cases it can bring positive change to the world. Through logos Martin Luther King Jr. further expands his letter and provides more reason for readers to believe what King is saying is just and morally correct, but he must still appeal to the feelings of his fellow African American’s and those who are on his side by appealing to the emotions of those people and anyone else reading.
King finally using the rhetorical appeal of pathos by sharing experiences he and has people have witnessed and experienced. He shares these events with the reader through lines such as, “When you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim.” (King ), and also “when you have seen hate-filled policeman curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters.” (King ) The specific choice of words in these lines directly appeals to every human with a heart. Saying something such as “Lynch your mothers and fathers”, appeals to everyone with a mother or a father. By using the great amount of detail, he does allow his audience to almost picture these mobs lynching your family and killing them. By using the strong emotion, he catches his readers attention and pulls them into reading the many other ideas he wishes to share with the world. This is specifically what King wishes to happen, he wants his audience to understand the pain he and many others have been through due to this injustice. King does bring light back into the paper by giving his views on positive changes that can be made to abolish much of the injustice he experiences in everyday life.