Many Americans view Martin Luther King as a savior to the Blacks, a leader and a general in the nonviolent approach to integration and equality for Blacks. All these are good adjectives to describe King, but I think of him as more of an ambassador or a diplomat who is responsible for showing the humanity of the Negroes. His intellect allowed him to communicate with whites in a way in which they could respect him as a man. Martin Luther King wrote a letter while imprisoned in a Birmingham city jail to explain why he believe that non-violent demonstrations were essential to accomplishing integration in not only Birmingham, one of the most segregated cities in America at that time, but all across the nation. He was called to Birmingham to participate in a nonviolent direct action rally and was thrown in jail for not having a marching license. His goal was to answer the concern and questions of eight white religious leaders in the south and give his opinion for why he thought the time for negotiations had expired and the time for action was necessary. King used his intelligence to speak to the educated white religious leaders to leave no doubt as to the question if nonviolent action was necessary and justified. .
King's first statement is that the concern these people have is for the demonstrations themselves, but King is upset that the concern should be that these actions were the last alternative for the Negro community. He then goes on to analyze four steps that should be taken in a nonviolent campaign. "In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive, negotiation, self-purification, and direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham"(pg 36). The first step: collection of facts to determine if injustices are alive is obvious, police brutality and unfair treatment of Negroes in the court system was rampant in America at that time.
