Letter from a Birmingham Jail
– Activity Prompt: Although the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s was met with violence, the protesters’ words and actions reflected a philosophy of nonviolence. Imagine you are a protester who was blasted with high-pressure hoses in Birmingham in 1963 and subsequently arrested. While in jail, you are asked to write a letter detailing your experiences and justifying your methods to the New York Times. Use quotes from John Kennedy’s recent speech about civil rights and details from your experiences (as documented in the photograph) to make your letter as convincing as possible to the subscribership. Consider how these sources relate to and provide insight into the civil rights movement. What was at stake? What was the philosophy and methodology of the protesters? What was the reaction?
– The essay must include 1 or 2 paragraphs with at least 275 words. You must use the two primary sources included in word file, as well as the contextual information that you have learned about the civil rights movement, to support your argument.
ANSWER
Unjust Birmingham
To the Washington Times,
As I write this letter, I am a dejected black person. Not only do the atrocities done to us anger us to the core, but the sheer disregard for black lives utterly demoralizes our existence. Since we were brought to this country as slaves, all we have been doing as a people is struggle and fight even for the most basic form of human right. Our very own existence has proven a challenge in ‘the land of the free’. The Birmingham protest was a result of a people tired of discrimination and segregation. We, too, deserve the best schools, the best public amenities, and the best access to healthcare. We have a right to every available proclamation as stipulated in our constitution. As President Kennedy asserted, we are no different from white people (Lawson, 2021). we deserve an equal share of treatment, and the colour of our skin does not warrant anything different.
As I write to you, what began as a peaceful protest to end discrimination and segregation (infamously the Jim Crow laws), turned into a catastrophic turn of events. The police have attacked us with water horses, with zero regard for whether the other person at the end of the pipe was a woman or a child (Augustine, 2017). We have had dogs unleashed unto us, as the scream of black people filled the streets of Birmingham. We have been battered, bruised, spat at, and called every inhuman racial slur any human being can endure. We, therefore, ask for your help in spreading the message of injustice to the rest of the world. At this rate, we shall be killed and the news buried from existence, however, with your intervention, you can help us get the justice and equality that we want and need. After all, we too, are Americans.
References
Lawson, S. F. (2021). 3 Civil Rights. In Exploring the Johnson Years (pp. 93-125). University of Texas Press.
Augustine, J. C. (2017). The Fiery Furnace, Civil Disobedience, & the Civil Rights Movement: A Biblical Exegesis on Daniel 3 & the Letter from Birmingham Jail. Rich. Pub. Int. L. Rev., 21, 243.
