Comprehension
King spends several paragraphs addressing this specific audience, especially critical of their lack of assistance to his cause.
Who are the eight white clergymen from Alabama?
King alludes to this religious figure to prove his point about outsiders helping those in need.
Who is the Apostle Paul?
The rhetorical device King is using in this quote: "One may well ask: 'How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?'"
What is rhetorical questions?
When King states, "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed," he us utilizing an appeal to...
What is Pathos?
King's method of protest.
What is nonviolent direct action?
King alludes to this famous thinker when proving his point about creating "necessary tension".
Who is Socrates?
The device used when King states, "the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us."
What is a metaphor?
By referring to his audience as his “friends” and his “dear fellow clergymen,” King is establishing what appeal?
Ethos
In "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. describes two types of laws. What are the two types of laws and what is the overall difference?
The two types of laws that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. describes in "Letter from Birmingham Jail," are just and unjust laws.
Just laws are rooted in universal principles of fairness, while unjust laws any law that degrades human personality.
King alludes to Hitler and the Hungarian freedom fighters to demonstrate the difference between these two ideas.
What are just and unjust laws?
What type of rhetorical device does King use in the following quote from "Letter From Birmingham Jail?"
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was legal and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal."
What is an allusion?
Paragraph 14, when King provides the anecdote of having to explain to his daughter why she can’t go to “Funtown,” is an example of what appeal?
According to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his "Letter From Birmingham Jail," why is King disappointed with the white moderates as well as the white church and its leadership?
King believes that white moderates and the white church have not stood up boldly in support of civil rights.
King alludes to these five historical figures when defining his notion of extremism.
Who are the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther, John Bunyan, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson?
The theme of "Letter From Birmingham Jail."
African Americans could no longer wait for their rights to be granted through the legal system, so they took to nonviolent direct action.
When King says "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" he is using an appeal to...
What is Ethos (or credibility)?
There are this many steps in any nonviolent campaign, according to King.
What is four? (information gathering, negotiation, purifying reflection, and direct action)
This saint is quoted by King as having said, "an unjust law is no law at all."
Who is St. Augustine?
King's statement, "Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?" uses this rhetorical device...
What is parallelism or anaphora?
When King writes "There can be no gainsaying of the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country. Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in this nation. These are the hard, brutal, and unbelievable facts" he is using an appeal to...
What is Logos (or logic and reasoning)?