MLK Letter From Birmingham City Jail

In class this week, we have been focusing our discussions on the works of Martin Luther King Jr.  One of the most important is his Letter from Birmingham City Jail.  We are using it as an example for our Passage-Based Freewriting.  Freewriting is when someone writes continuously about a certain topic with minimal editing.  The intent is to preserve the writer's original thoughts. 

The portion of Letter from Birmingham City Jail I have chosen to base my writing is:
"I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, 'wait.' ... when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: 'Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?'... then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait."

This excerpt really stood out to me as it had quite a bit to do with black children and how they were affected by segregation.  Children easily make impressions of things because of their young age.  MLK states that "see here begin to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people".  This a important point to remember as children are the forefront of the next generation; their beliefs are formed mainly when they are young.  The next generation of black children would grow up bitter against white people because of the situation they grew up in.  The goal of the Civil Rights Movement was to allow black people to have the same rights as other races.  Whether or not it has actually achieved that today (i.e. recent race problems with the police and economic disadvantages), one of the harder tasks of the movement was to convince black children to embrace white children as their brothers and sisters.  Those black children probably had just as much trouble making a good relationship with white people later in life, as did the white children from that time with black people.  Preaching hate hurts everyone.  Not only is the current generation affected, but future generations are going to have to deal with the aftermath of that hate. 
The other reason this excerpt stood out to me was that the parents of those black children had the insurmountable task of explaining to their children why segregation existed and why they would have to live with it.  That would be incredibly frustrating as you would want your child to be able to do anything they want, but they're still too young to understand why they can't.  The feeling of being able to do anything when you're a child is one of the best.  I can't imagine how terrible it felt when you were told that couldn't do any of that just because of your skin color.  This excerpt, as well as the entire letter, has many important examples of why the Civil Rights Movement had to succeed.