On April 12, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. Was Sentenced To A Nine-day Jail Term

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Term Paper Title	On April 12, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. Was Sentenced To A Nine-day Jail Term
# of Words	683
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	2.73

On April 12, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. was sentenced to a nine-day jail term for his part in desegregation demonstrations. While in jail King received a letter from eight Alabama ministers. These ministers were sympathetic to Kings goals - but they said that King's unlawful methods at attaining them were wrong. They believed that King could achieve his goals without breaking the law, and they asked him to call off the demonstrations. King disagreed. It was during this time that King wrote his essay "Letter from Birmingham Jail," which described his concerns for the laws of America and his hope for justice for African Americans.

In his "Letter from Birmingham Jail, King talks about the tension between black and white. He expresses his disappointment at the white moderates who "prefers a negative peace, which is the absence of tension to a positive peace, which is the presence of justice." He talks about his hope that "the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress."

One of King's most important and most extended argument begins with his making a distinction between just and unjust laws. "One may well ask," wrote King, "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer "is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: just laws… and unjust laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws," King said, but "conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law, King suggests, "squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law… is out of harmony with the moral law." King also quoted Augustine: "An unjust law is no law at all." He then quoted Thomas Aquinas: "An unjust law i...

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