Liberty
University HIUS 222 Reading comprehension quiz 3 solutions answers right
In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King,
Jr. and supporters of civil rights for AfricanAmericans began a series of
protests against the racial policies in Birmingham, Alabama. The Birmingham
police arrested King for his protests. King sent the letter excerpted below
from his jail cell to clergymen around the country explaining his motives and
seeking their support. Excerpt from Martin Luther King’s "Letter from a
Birmingham Jail," April 16, 1963 My Dear Fellow Clergymen: …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… Moreover, I am cognizant of the
interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta
and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a
threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of
mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly,
affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow,
provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the
United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
…In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts
to determine whether injustices exist;
negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in
Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs
this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in
the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have
experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more
unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other
city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis
of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers.
But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation. …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 still 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 darts of segregation to say, "Wait."
But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and
drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill
your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast
majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage
of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech
stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't
go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television,
and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to
colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in
her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by
developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is
asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep
night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no
motel will accept you; when you are humiliated
day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and
"colored"; when your first name
becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however
old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and
mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that
you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what
to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of
"nobodiness"—then you will understand why we find it difficult to
wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no
longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can
understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal
of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate
concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's
decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance
it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well
ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?"
The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust.
I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal
but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral
responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that
"an unjust law is no law at all…"
Question 1 What is King’s rationale for
breaking the law?
Question 2 Why did King argue, “We are caught
in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny”?
Question 3 According to King, which of the
following is not a step in a nonviolent campaign?
Question 4 Whose example does King claim he
is following by going to Birmingham and protesting the discrimination against
AfricanAmericans?
Question 5 How did children help shape
King’s decision to act?
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