Letter From Birmingham Jail

While the specific audience for “Letter from Birmingham Jail” includes the eight Alabama clergymen who signed “A Call for Unity,” there is a national audience of white readers written into the text by King.King used the title “The Negro Is Your Brother” for the first national publication of the essay in The Atlantic.This title is a strong indicator that King understood that this reader had not yet come to see African-Americans as fellow Americans and human beings deserving of support in their struggle to receive basic rights. The South, whose regional identity was predicated in part on the oppression of African-Americans, is particularly called to task for dehumanizing African-Americans.King’s choices as a writer, including his frequent references to American history and Americans’ belief in the importance of freedom, are designed to convince this skeptical audience that there was nothing extreme about the freedom movement in Birmingham.

C. C. J. Carpenter, Joseph A. Durick, Rabbi Hilton L. Grafman, Bishop Paul Hardin,

Bishop Nolan B. Harmon, George M. Murray, Edward V. Ramage, and Earl Stallings are authors of “A Call for Unity: Public Statement by Eight Alabama Clergymen,” and serve as one audience for King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” a response to their open letter.

King represents the voice of the clergymen by using direct quotes from their letter, including the phrases “‘unwise and untimely’” (85), “‘extreme’” (90), and “‘outsiders” (86), keywords that summarize each of the central parts of their argument against his campaign. In his response to these arguments, King represents them as men of “goodwill” (85) who have allowed their acceptance of the status quo to lead them into a position against the Birmingham protests that puts them on the wrong side of history in the context of both Christianity and the American Revolution. This representation underscores the degree to which King still saw them as potential allies.

Boutwell was elected mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, in a close election that pitted him against segregationist Eugene “Bull” Connor and two other candidates. Because of the extremism of Connor’s segregationist policies and Connor’s highly visible and increasingly violent responses to protestors in his role as the commissioner of public safety, Boutwell was the more moderate candidate and thus deserving of a chance to make changes at a moderate pace. King’s portrayal of Boutwell in the essay is of a personable, kind man who nevertheless would slow progress on the issue of civil rights.