Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - Letter From Birmingham Jail - Episode 1 - Dr. King Reaches Out Of His Jail Cell To Touch The Heart Of A Nation!

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Martin Luther King Jr. - Letter From Birmingham Jail - Episode 1 - Dr. King Reaches Out Of His Jail Cell To Touch The Heart Of A Nation!

I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.

I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. Today we are going to start a three part series on a man who changed the landscape of political protesting- demonstrating that positive change can occur without massive loss of life. He won the Nobel Peace Prize when he was 35 years old, at the time he was the youngest to ever receive the award. His life became synonymous with civil disobedience- taking it farther than Thoreau ever dreamed possible. He radically and controversially claimed the role of a Christian political resister was not only the role to resist injustice. This was not enough, to be successful one must accompany resistance with love- loving the persecutor- a claim that would be put to the test over and over and for which he would be martyred. On Jan 20, 1986, the US Federal Government proclaimed a national holiday commemorating his life and message. Today over 955 (that number is likely small), but there are at least 955 major street, boulevards and thoroughfares that carry his name not only across the United States but across the world. If you haven’t figured it out yet, we are talking about the life, literature and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Specifically, the iconic letter that moved a nation from apathy to change, the “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” It was written on April 16, 1963 and famously addressed to “My Dear Fellow Clergyman.”

Indeed, and yet, so many students or really people, who hear that name know so little about the movement itself. Growing up first in our nation’s capital, Washington DC and then Brazil, I’d heard of Dr. King. I knew he stood for non-violence, but I ignorantly thought he literally just walked around preaching and protesting, carrying signs, singing and marching. I had NO idea how calculated the entire Civil Rights moment was. I had no idea the amount of strategy and genius that went into the planning and execution of one of the most effective non-violent movements in the world- or even how many years it was in the making. I just thought, Dr. King got up one day and just started protesting.

Well, I think most people don’t, even people of good faith who try to mimic some of his basic strategies. It’s really difficult to wrap our minds around the complexity involved, not to mention the sheer power of King’s personal rhetorical charisma that carried the movement from a few thousand African-American Christian protesters in Montgomery, Alabama to 250,000 people of all ethnicities and faith and the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The changes in legislation and the implementation of laws that had been allowed to be ignored for a century were a direct result of this movement we are discussing over the next few episodes.

So, let’s get started beginning with some terminology that we hear when it comes to Civil Rights, words that many of us who aren’t originally from the South may not be familiar with- for example what are Jim Crow laws. Who was Jim Crow and what are his laws?

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