Dr. Martin Luther King's Letter From a Birmingham Jail is one of the most influential pieces of work in modern history.

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        Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail is one of the most influential pieces of work in modern history.  Dr. King has a way of using words that captivates you and really makes you think about what he is saying.  If I were to make any changes to this letter there would be few and they would be far between.  I think he does an amazing job getting his point across.  Since my major is Radio/TV, the changes I do suggest would be from the perspective of a broadcaster.  I will evaluate positives and negatives of this speech in terms of how well it would do if it were broadcasted.  

        To start, the first few paragraphs are great.  They state Dr. King’s purpose for being in Birmingham and they are detailed.  He seems to have answered any question that may be asked concerning his stay in Birmingham in the first four paragraphs. This paragraph summarizes his intent: “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I. compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.”

        The forth paragraph contains two very famous quotes by Dr. King: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” and “whatever effects one directly, effects all indirectly.”  These two statements are very powerful and that is why they are still repeated today.  

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        I think there is one point in this speech where Dr. King uses words to make an effect so powerful that any human who hears it can’t not be affected by it.  “We have waited .for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God- given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." ...

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