Determine King’s purpose in paragraphs 1-21 of “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and analyze how he uses rhetoric and specific word choices to advance that purpose.

Martin Luther King Jr. uses the letter to defend his strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism and oppression. He states that people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws in a peaceful manner. Kink uses ethos and pathos as well as allegory and allusions, especially Biblical, as rhetorical strategies.