You may have read King's famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" but how many people have actually read the letter to which King was responding to?
Four days before King wrote his response, a group of clergymen wrote an open letter that was published in the Birmingham newspaper. King's letter is actually written in the margins of the newspaper he read this message in. He was so struck by it that he felt the need to respond in that moment to no one in particular, an inanimate object. In order for us to understand the letter, we need to understand the inspiration and that is this letter. Many have called this a condemnation of King's actions but it is difficult to find the right word since they are, as King will call them, "the white moderates". In truth I was going to dig into this letter and break it down point-by-point but then I realized how futile that would be. Why? Dr. King does it for me and with such brilliance that I could not possibly compete. So we will do our best to break down and flesh out King's response with the same sort of tact, logic, scrutiny and synthesis that King did to the clergy's letter. Take a moment and look it over and leave any feedback in the comments or on my Twitter.
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The school year may be ending but this website is about to be live.
This summer, while you are tanning or working jobs, I will be looking after this project deeply analyzing and breaking down MLK and "The Letter from Birmingham Jail". Still taking volunteers for contributions but I will start personally asking people soon. We did a great job last year and I hope to build on that moving forward! YAY JUNE BEING UPON US! With the school year winding down and summer inching ever so closer, it is time to revisit my summer project.
This year I want to examine Martin Luther King Jr's Letter from Birmingham Jail, but I do not want to do it alone. I want YOUR help, insight, thoughts and interpretations. Do not worry about what it has to look like or what it should cover. The point is to take a common source and take it wherever our heart desires because everything is everything. We need to model the kind of thinking and drawing connections that we want in the world. Whether you are a teacher, a businessman, student, lawyer, doctor, or everything in-between we want you! You are an expert at something and your experience helps bring flavor to the discussion of history (not the monologue of textbooks or lectures). So will you help contribute this summer? Be it one article or a million? Let me know on Twitter or in the comments, we are an open-sourced world and so should be our learning. |
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June 2017
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