The ideas presented by Dr. King in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" struck a chord in me as I read it. I realized that Dr. King's views on justice coincide with my beliefs strongly and also made much more sense to me than those held by Socrates. As we learned in reading Crito, Socrates did not believe in fighting against injustice with more injustice. He believed that even if the decision based on Athenian law to put him to death were unjust, it would do no good to fight this decision with unjust actions. On the other hand, Dr. King explained how we have a moral responsibility to fight unjust laws, even if it is with immoral/unjust actions. Dr. King also sees justice as a continuous concept in that justice cannot be truly realized unless it exists everywhere. As he says "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
In the era in which Dr. King lived, injustice was obvious in the form of lesser civil rights afforded to African Americans i.e. many states still not allowing Blacks to vote. And I agree with Dr. King in that justice must be uniform because how can it be claimed that justice exists if there is injustice in some places? For instance, it does not make sense to me to say well, since 80 percent of Americans realize equal rights and only 20 percent are discriminated against, I guess America is 80 percent just. Justice is not something that can come in partial quantities because if you are denying justice to one group then this by default means that justice is not being upheld. In the case that African Americans did not realize many civil rights that White Americans did, it is unjust in nature that these White Americans were able to realize greater rights than African Americans. In other words, by only providing justice to some people, the government was discriminating and facilitating inequality and this makes the whole system unjust.
Another point of Dr. King's that I really liked was how he explained that we all have a moral duty to fight against unjust laws even if it means using unjust actions. I agree wholeheartedly with this point because how else would just laws be achieved from unjust ones if no one fought to make them this way? And more specifically for Dr. King's time period, how can you expect African Americans to use just actions in order to fight these laws when these just actions are powerless? If I was a member of a group that was being discriminated against for hundreds of years, then why would I be willing to sit around and wait for justice to come to my door? In the mind of Dr. King, nothing that the government had done previously had signaled that equal rights for Blacks were on the horizon. And in the face of inaction and continued injustice, I believe individuals and groups must turn to whatever actions will help them secure equal rights.
I guess what I am saying is that laws are supposed to be put in place to be just, and if the laws do not promote justice then clearly they need to be reformed. Even if it is obvious, as it was to MLK, that this reformation requires actions that others might view as unjust, these actions still must be undertaken. Groups that have been discriminated against have clearly been the victims of injustice for long periods of time and to ask these people to refrain from using unjust actions would be ridiculous and hypocritical. Sometimes, as MLK realized, you have to do whatever it takes to realize justice or at least move closer to it. Below I have attached Dr. King's famous "I have a dream speech" which explains what equal rights and justice would mean to him after being denied both for so long.
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