King of Change

King of Change (715)

“You may well ask, ‘Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, etc.? Isn’t negotiation a better path?’ You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister. This may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. So the purpose of the direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. We, therefore, concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in the tragic attempt to live in a monologue rather than a dialogue” (King 474-475)

Negotiations hold the key to unlocking doors for disgruntled parties and most often produce a transformation to what seemed to be impossible otherwise. In Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, he poses the great question of whether to wait for negotiations which have been put off before, or take direct action with a nonviolent movement such as a march or a sit-in. Is there a time when talks can be over looked for something more aggressive like marches or sit-ins? Do the actions fit the need, or should proceeding into such a feat be taken? However the case may be negotiations should be the front-runner in how we maturely deal with differences of opinion and disagreements.

The need for negotiations is necessary. As a society, we should not go into direct action, but take the time to analyze our problems and bring change without using tension to do so. The use of stress in a situation will only make the possibility of adjustment more difficult to all parties associated with the dispute. Talks between differing sides not only could alter the problem at hand but possibly bring light to other areas that need to be addressed that might not have been dealt with if a march or a sit-in was to occur.

After much frustration with vital meetings and discussions not coming together, even a well-respected man such as Martin Luther King Jr. could not see how negotiations would benefit his cause. He was an intelligent man and an authority on the subject of Nonviolence. He used his presence and his mind to help others see that there was a possibility for change. Moreover, if they believed and followed the rules of Nonviolence, they too would see the transformation that could come from the hard work that they had put into it. King used his situated ethos or authority, experience and identity to give his actions substance so others would follow his lead. Ultimately, he chose to abandon the idea that talks would bring about this transformation and chose marches and sit-ins to propel segregation into the laps of those that had asked him to “wait” for change, force-feeding them the necessity of the cause.

The cause was an emotionally draining fight to make segregation part of the past and advance into the future a fully integrated society. The main rhetorical appeal used by King was Pathos, meaning to appeal to emotion. He used the emotional bind with the use of the word “crisis” to pull his readers in when he wrote, “So the purpose of the direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation” (475). Silently King used his literary voice to make the readers believe that the time to take steps towards a transformation was now. Otherwise, the