Isaiah Hall

English 5-6
10/20/15

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In 1963 Martin Luther King led a civil right campaign in birmingham to try to stop
segregation. In his speech he uses stylistic device like personification and metaphors. In these
paragraphs you will learn what segregation did to Black people back then and learn why Martin
Luther King tried so hard to stop segregation.
The first stylistic device Martin Luther King used in his speech was a metaphor. The
metaphor was perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation
to say,wait. This quote is a metaphor for how much segregation hurt negros. Martin Luther
King used this metaphor to get his point across. The point that he was trying to get across was
that segregation hurt so many people and that needs to stop.
The second stylistic device that he used in his speech was personification. The quote of
the personification is your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old
daughter why she cant go to public amusement park that has been just advertised on tv.Martin
Luther King used personification to emphasis that fact black parent had to go through even more
challenges than most because they had to go through the troubles of explaining to their children
why they cant go to the amusement park. The reason was because they were black.
The third stylistic device that he used in his speech was a metaphor. The metaphor was see
ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky.In this metaphor he
means that her mind is already starting to learn to not like white people. Martin Luther King used
this metaphor to convey how black people start to dislike white people as kids.
Martin Luther King is conveying that segregation needs to
stop and that segregation hurts so many people/families. The way he conveyed this was in his
speech when he stated all the hardships that black people had to go through everyday of their
lives even as kids. After hearing Martin Luther Kings speech you should be fully aware of

segregation and how it hurt so many black people in 1960s. Also why segregation needed to
stop.