"Letter from Birmingham Jail": Examples of Rhetorical Devices – Flashcards

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and Gog-given rights.

The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward gaining political independence...

Stinging darts of segregation

vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers

smothering in an airtight "cage of poverty"

tongue twisted

speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old

see tears welling up in her eyes

"ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky"

n*gger, boy, John

"plagued" with inner fears

"cup of endurance"

"abyss" of despair

Supreme court decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools

How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?

One has a moral responsibility to disobey just laws

St. Augustine said that "an unjust law is no law at all."

To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

All segregation statues are unjust because segregation distorts the sound and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.

A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had not part in enacting or devising the law.

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

I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit.

I submit that 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 community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar.

early Christian VS Roman Empire; Socrates; Boston Tea Party

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal"...

If today I lived in a communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's anti-religious laws.

When you have seen... When you... (paragraph 1)

...segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful.

A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal."

The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.