Letter From Birmingham Jail

to what opposing veiw is king providing a counterarguement

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Dr. King switches gears quickly, noting that the clergymen are anxious over the black man’s “willingness to break laws.” He admits that his intention seems paradoxical, since he urges people to follow Brown v. Board of Education (“the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation”) while he is apparently willing to break laws (174).

And yet he insists that this is not a paradox, but rather an acknowledgement of the distinction between “just and unjust” laws (174). He insists that everyone has a “legal” and “moral responsibility” to follow just laws, but that one equally “has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws” (174). He cites St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas to justify this latter claim.