In a brilliant piece of writing, Martin Luther King Jr. responded in his Letter From a Birmingham Jail by exposing the obvious hypocrisy of the clergymen who had called for unity. The ministers criticized King for coming to Alabama from Georgia, as an "outsider" who was just making the situation worse. King calls them hypocrites by pointing out that Jesus in his ministry was called "to all corners of the Greco-Roman world". Throughout his response, King uses biblical language to set the clergymen straight.
Whie the ministers call on negroes and King to "obey the law" and pursue equality through negotiations, King points out:
"One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all'."
Here he is saying that he is being asked to follow man's law, while the ministers and white government refuse to honor God's law.
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