“Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]”
This letter is very powerful. He makes very good points about our rights. One part that stood out to me was when he spoke on just and unjust laws. He talked a lot about morality and what is really morally right and wrong pertaining to our laws. When he was speaking about unjust laws, I tried to imagine living in such a time like that. Seeing amusement parks on TV but not being able to go, being abused and taunted at school it all seems so farfetched yet it was only fifty years ago. Another one of his main points that stood out to me was when he was talking about negotiation. When I was reading it I was almost finishing his sentences. Of course negotiation is the right path but when the community keeps refusing to negotiate, something else needs to happen.
I really don’t blame King for being “disappointed with the white moderate” because he had many reasons to be. It was very powerful to me when he said he was disappointed with the church. This is when religion gets tricky to me. The white church back then most likely thought that they were doing the right things in their God’s eyes. Who is to say that they weren’t? Most likely, the men and women that attended that church lived and died thinking that segregation was lawful and, if I may say so, holy. I may analyzing incorrectly but I don’t really think I am.
The Essay on Historical development of English Common Law
... and rural courts applied local customary law, Chancery and maritime courts ... common law in England coexisted, as civil law did in other countries, with other systems of law. Church courts applied canon law, urban ... with the development of national legal systems in civil law countries during the early modern period. But where legal ...
It is insane to think about how our rights have changed so drastically. It was a very slow process, yet it was only about a century long to get to where we are today which is closing in on perfect equality. The fact that, at times, laws were in place to seem to benefit the African Americans, still it seemed that America was against us. The white community was very stubborn in the changing society. We needed people like King to get us to where we are today.
Since African Americans didn’t have many rights back then, according to laws, authorities were only doing their job and responsibilities. This was one of their responsibilities to keep the order. It is so crazy knowing that people were ordered, as one of their responsibilities, to deny the rights of other human beings. It’s almost gross to me that in some days, African Americans weren’t even seen as human beings, just animals and property to be used for work. Sometimes I think how different things would be if we were never enslaved. It poses many questions and issues though such as, how would we have even gotten to America? If we didn’t would we have modernized in the way that we did? The crazy thing about history is that every little detail counts. If one little thing didn’t happen the way that it did, our world would be drastically different.
I chose this letter mostly at first glance because it looked like the easiest to read. I forgot how much I liked learning about the Civil Rights though which made this even better. The amount of courage that people like King had and what they were willing to sacrifice for the greater good, for a better America that they knew they wouldn’t see in their own lifetime, is amazing to me. King talks about a few different issues in the letter and I think where he stands on all points is valid.
Relating to Fahrenheit 451, although it’s related to the same theme of rights and responsibilities, this real world past was worse dealing with rights and laws than this fictional futuristic world. In the book, they basically had most of their rights to give them all the freedom that they needed, except books. We didn’t even have that at this time. In the book, the government was trying to control the population as best as they could, so they censored real world issues and events. In our real past, the laws were unjust. Our rights were not given to us. Laws degraded human personality and segregated people which “distorts the soul and personality”.
The Essay on A world without Law would be a world without Sin
According to one of the Holy Books, the Bible, when God created the first man and woman, He knew as the author and finisher of man that he has mind, a conscience which is 2-sided. It could be destructive or constructive, it could embrace good or shun evil, it could love or hate based on the outline that he knows what is wrong and or right. That was the basic reason why God warned them or gave a ...
