Welcome: This unit asks you to study the most important work written during the American Civil Rights Movement, "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (1963) by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. This unit also expects you to write a Three Paragraph Essay on the subject of Rev. King's "Letter." The essay is worth 60 points.

Learning Objectives

In this Getting Started module you should do the following:

Study the following essay which is a model of a three paragraph essay. It is the model that you must follow in the writing of your essay: A Model Three Paragraph Essay.
Study Rev. King's "Letter." Read it as many times as you can, with the questions below in mind.
Here is the link to Rev. King's "Letter": "Letter from Birmingham Jail"
Think about the the following questions, and prepare to write a three paragraph essay about one of these important themes. Ask yourself which one is the most important one.
Rev. King repeatedly reminds his readers of his link (and our link) to the Judeo-Christian tradition in America. Why is the Judeo-Christian tradition the most important theme of his "Letter"?
Rev. King repeatedly argues to his readers that his political position (and our political position) is firmly rooted in the position of America's Founding Fathers, and he mentions Jefferson and Lincoln among others. Why is his position which is rooted in the position of the Founding Fathers, the most important theme of his "Letter"?
Rev. King repeatedly argues that the Segregation Laws that plagued the South in his lifetime will be overcome because they are not only unconstitutional but also unjust. Why is his argument that the Segregation Laws of the South are not only unconstitutional but also unjust the most important theme of his "Letter"?
Concerning the third point above, I need to add this note, and this will be understood by those of you who have read and understood my comments on the SCOTUS opinion, Plessy v. Ferguson (which I wrote about in the TQs for the research paper). Rev. King does not mention the Plessy opinion in his "Letter," but he does mention the case that overturned Plessy in 1954. It was Brown v. Board of Education. One important way that the Supreme Court gets rid of dreadful SCOTUS opinions is that it vacates them in subsequent opinions. (Remember, this is what happened to the Korematsu opinion. It was vacated in 2018 by SCOTUS. Until then, it actually remained "on the books," to the utter shame of SCOTUS.) Plessy which was a horrible opinion was overturned or vacated by Brown. The problem in the segregated South for many decades was this: The Plessy opinion had validated "Separate but Equal" which meant in practice that SEGREGATION became "legal" and "constitutional" even though it was unjust and wrong and evil. That is what the Civil Rights Movement was all about--overturning those segregation laws which the Democrat governors and mayors in the South stubbornly held onto for decades. In fact, the Democrat Party widely supported these segregation laws, just as the Democrat Party was the party of slavery. If you don't like me mentioning that it was Democrats who held onto those segregation laws, I'm only mentioning historical facts. I can go into it in greater detail if you want, but I will leave it at that for now.
One more point. When you write your essay this week, you will need to take a few BRIEF quotations from Rev. King's "Letter" to prove your point, and you will need to give a citation to say where you got your quotation from. What I want you to do is give the paragraph number in parentheses after the quotation. This is NOT the proper way to do citations. We will discuss the proper way later. The reason that you cannot do the proper way here is because this version of Rev. King's "Letter" does not have page numbers. The proper way to do citations is to cite page numbers in parentheses after quotations.

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