The Letter from the Birmingham Jail: critical thinking notes

Dr. Charles Ess, Philosophy and Religion, Drury University

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The Letter consciously appeals to both prophetic  religious impulses (that part of the Judeo-Christian tradition stressing liberation of the oppressed, as exemplified in the Exodus event and the subsequent ethos of care for "the widow, the orphan, and the stranger") and the rationalist/revolutionary  arguments for democratic rights and freedoms developed especially in the Enlightenment, and familiar to us from Locke and Jefferson. Dr. King makes this conjunction explicit towards the end of the Letter  when he says

One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Dr. King skillfully weaves these two moral sources into a rhetorically powerful and logically compelling argument for nonviolent civil disobedience in the service of overcoming segregation and racism - most centrally, by arguing that the institutions of segregation are essentially unjust, anti-democratic elements in a society which claims to be essentially democratic.  As such, the laws supporting segregation must be disobeyed - in part, to overthrow such laws and replace them with more just, more democratic laws that recognize the basic rights and freedoms of people of color.

The Letter  thus represents a crucial extension of the democratic argument developed by John Locke and incorporated by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.

In the following, I highlight several of the key arguments in the order they appear in the Letter. Additional comments and explanation can be found by clicking on the links indicated.

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.

Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. ...//

Paul to the Macedonians//

So M.L.K. must respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

More schematically, King's analogy argument can be seen to work this way:

As with any analogy argument, this one seeks to establish as many relevant similarities  as possible between Martin Luther King's case (coming to Birmingham to fight injustice) and previous, presumably acceptable cases of moral acts (the prophets of the 8th ct., the Apostle Paul).  The greater the similarity between these cases - the stronger King's conclusion is.

King will use more analogy arguments especially towards the close of the Letter.

Critical questions to ask of any analogy argument: what are the relevant similarities and relevant differences?  The stronger the similarities, the stronger the conclusion - but if similarities appear to be outweighed by the differences between the cases, the conclusion is accordingly weakened.

In this case: how similar is King to the 8th ct. prophets and the Apostle Paul?  How similar are the acts of the prophets (condemning Israelite infidelity to God's call for justice) and Paul's spreading the Gospel to King's activity in Birmingham? Are there relevant differences that outweigh any similarities?

Moreover, King invokes moral authorities  who would be accepted by the Christian clergy to whom the letter is addressed. Question: would this count as a fallacious appeal to authority ?

A second argument justifying King's presence in Birmingham - over against the objection against "outside agitators":

[P] Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states.

[C] [given such interrelatedness] I cannot be unconcerned about what happens in Birmingham.

[P] Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

[P] We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

[P] Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

/.. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea.

/.. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider within it bounds.

Question: especially if these last three premises are true - do they strongly support the conclusions King draws?

Question: on what grounds (additional premises, evidence, etc.) would one accept these last three premises as true?  (Unless these premises are true, and unless they in fact support the conclusion in a valid argument structure - there is no reason to accept the conclusion as true.  This would comfort King's critics, of course.)

Question: are these premises more likely to be accepted by someone who holds to a more prophetic religious sensibility - or apocalyptic religious sensibility? (See the contrast between the prophetic and the apocalyptic.)

We have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.

...it is a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.

Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture;

but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

[C] [tacit: real gains in civil rights will come only as a result of the pressure of nonviolent civil disobedience - because this will force groups (which tend to be more immoral than individuals) to give up the privileges they enjoy through segregation and which they would not otherwise give up.]

Question: the strength of this argument turns in part on the tacit equation between privileges enjoyed by some and the institutions of segregation as ostensibly resulting in those privileges.  Would King's argument be stronger or weaker if he made this connection more explicit?

One of King's most important and most extended arguments begins with his making a distinction between just and unjust laws:

[P] One has a legal and a moral responsibility to obey just laws.

[P] Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

"I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'"

This distinction is not only rooted in St. Augustine - an especially significant theologian in both Catholic and Protestant traditions - but also receives further development in Thomas Aquinas, to whom King now refers: for Aquinas,

Unjust law = a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law

By contrast: any law that uplifts human personality is just.

Given these definitions, King can then invoke a claim he developed earlier in the Letter  - namely, that segregation damages the human soul and personality - to draw a central conclusion which condemns segregation statutes as unjust:

[P] Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

[C] All segregation statutes are unjust because

[P] segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.

(Notice that here, King's conclusion is literally central, as it stands between the two premises supporting it.  King further supports his premise, "segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality," by making it a conclusion which follows from the additional premise/observation, [P] "It [segregation] gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.")

In the second phase of this argument, King redefines "unjust law" in such a way as to intersect the democratic argument we have seen developed in Locke and Jefferson:

[P] An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself.

This is difference made legal.

[P] ...a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself.

This is sameness made legal.

[C] ...a law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law.

Once this first conclusion is established, it serves as a premise in the following argument:

[P] Because the segregation laws were enacted by the Alabama legislature --

representatives to which Negroes did not vote for (because they were denied the right to vote) --

"Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?"

[Implicit: such laws are not democratically structured, and so

[C] such laws are unjust]

[Tacit: such laws fail to derive from the consent of the governed.  In this way, specifically, King intersects Jefferson's argument in the Declaration of Independence  that just laws and governments derive their legitimacy from the consent of the governed.]

Having demonstrated that segregation laws are unjust - it follows immediately from his opening premise, "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws" that [C] we are obliged to disobey segregation laws.

1) "...an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the commmunity over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law."

That is, conscientious disobedience of an unjust law - especially with the intention of overturning injustice - shows the highest respect for the law, where just law is supposed to derive from natural law and God's moral order.

2) King further appeals to both religious  and philosophical  examples of such disobedience as a way of attempting to justify it further. "There is nothing new about this kind of disobedience," he tells us, followed by a list of examples:

King's connecting nonviolent civil disobedience of unjust laws with the rationalist, revolutionary arguments of Jefferson and Locke is strengthened in two further comments:

1) ...the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice...

King's language of "negative" and "positive" peace should be compared especially to Locke's distinction in Paragraph 57 of the Second Treatise between negative freedom (the Hobbesian freedom from constraints - including the restraints of even self-imposed law - which, both Hobbes and Locke agree, leads simply to a chaotic anarchy in which no one is free) and positive freedom (the freedom of rational human beings to give themselves law, both individually and collectively, in a democratic society).

2)  ...law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

King's language here echoes both Locke and Jefferson - but especially Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence where Jefferson argues that governments exist to protect basic human rights, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Given King's education, his use of these terms echoing Locke and Jefferson seems to me to be intentional and conscious.  

In any case, if King is consciously connecting his argument for nonviolent civil disobedience to the rationalist, revolutionary arguments of Locke and Jefferson - how good is the connection?  In particular, is the implicit analogy between the situation of the (largely) white colonialists in the 1700's and people of color in the American South in the 1950's a strong analogy?

King's critics object that peaceful actions must be condemned because they precipitate violence. King asks after the logic of this claim.  To counter this claim, he offers counterexamples in the form of analogies.  He argues that to criticize nonviolent civil disobedience because violence may follow from it is like:

condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery

condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated [his drinking the hemlock]

condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion.

If these analogies hold, i.e., between

these cases in which, though they led to violence, we do not condemn the victim of violence, and

civil disobedience, which may lead to violence,

then, since we do not condemn the victim of violence in the first cases, we should not condemn those who practice nonviolent civil disobedience who may also become victims of violence.

Question: are these good analogies?

King goes on to bolster this argument by an appeal to the law of the land: the federal courts have affirmed that it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence.

Question: is such an appeal fallacious appeal to authority?

King clearly would not think so.  In any case, between the analogies and the appeal to federal law, King establishes a summary conclusion: Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. (This conclusion, notice, echoes especially the prophetic concern with the victims of oppression.)

King makes this implicit connection with the prophetic tradition explicit as he continues:

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Consciously or unconsciously, [the American Negro] has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice.

The language of "the promised land" is hardly accidental in the hands of a preacher.  The promised land, of course, was for the Israelites the land of Canaan as the land of freedom from their enslavement at the hands of the Egyptians.  Again, this is a direct reference to the exemplary prophetic event, God's freeing the Israelites from the oppression of slavery.

This appeal raises two critical questions:

1)  How good is the analogy between the situation of the Israelites in ancient Egypt and the situation of people of color in the American South of the 1950's?  Is segregation and racism sufficiently "close" to actual slavery to make this analogy work?

2)  Is King's appeal to the prophetic tradition a fallacious appeal to authority?  Or is it a legitimate appeal to a moral and religious tradition he should expect to shared by his primary audience of fellow and sister clergy? (Again, consider the contrast between prophetic and apocalyptic sensibilities.)

Another argument by analogy. King responds to being categorized as an extremist by drawing analogies between himself and important religious and political figures in the Western tradition: King may be an extremist - but one like

// Jesus as an extremist for love ("love your enemies")

// the prophet Amos as an extremist for justice ("let justice roll down like waters...)

// Martin Luther as an extremist for individual freedom of conscience over against institutional authority

// John Bunyan as an extremist for conscience

// Abraham Lincoln as an extremist against slavery

// Thomas Jefferson ("we hold these truths to be self-evident.." - i.e., the Declaration  again)

If these analogies are good, then the tacit conclusion is first of all that King's "extremism" is in fact a direct expression of both prophetic religious impulses and the rationalist, revolutionary argument of Jefferson.  If King's audience accepts Jesus, Amos, Luther, Bunyan, Lincoln, and Jefferson - by analogy they must also accept King as attempting to extend the prophetic concern for the oppressed and the revolutionary argument for human rights and democratic freedoms to people of color.

If these analogies are good, then they allow King to make a second conclusion, couched in the form of rhetorical questions:

This now explicit conjunction between prophetic religion and rationalist/revolutionary argument is in fact not King's invention.  Rather, it reflects the historical influence of prophetic religious beliefs on the Enlightenment rationalists in the first place.  That is, as especially Locke makes clear, the ostensibly "secular" rational arguments developed for human rights and democratic polity are understood by many Enlightenment thinkers to be consistent with especially prophetic conceptions of human freedom and the importance of social justice, including democratic political arrangements.

In any case, this appeal to the prophetic side of Judaism and Christianity allows King to raise a criticism of the more apocalyptic Christianity practiced especially in white churches.  King asks, "What kind of people worship in these churches?"  His comments here should be compared especially with those of Frederick Douglass, who likewise criticized the Christianity of the (white) South which endorsed slavery and all its attendant violence and injustice.

Like Douglass, however, King appeals instead to the more prophetic tradition of Christianity - apparent in the early church, whose members, he suggests, were no doubt criticized for being the equivalent of "outside agitators " and "disturbers of the peace."

This is again an analogy - one which King pursues: despite these criticisms from polite society,

But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

There is here a tacit analogy between King's understanding of a Christian struggle to end segregation in the American South and the struggle of the early church to end infanticide and gladiatorial contests in ancient Rome.  Question: is this a good analogy?

An interesting element of King's defense of his prophetic pursuit of social justice and his critique of a more apocalpytic comfort with the status quo is his linking the latter with disillusionment among the young regarding organized religion.  Recalling the judgment of God spoken by prophets such as Amos, King notes: 

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Question: King wrote the Letter  in 1963.  It would be interesting to know what contemporary students think of institutional religion in the 1990's, especially in light of King's critique.

In his concluding paragraphs, King twice reiterates the conjunction he has explored and eveloped in the Letter  between prophetic religious sensibilities and the rationalist/revolutionary argument of the American tradition - now as a way of making most explicit the dual support of both traditions in the argument for nonviolent civil disobedience as a means of achieving freedom and justice:

We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom....If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. [....]

One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Comments?  Send e-mail to cmess@drury.edu