Injustice is a constant in the circle of life. There has not been a time in known human histow where injustice didn’t have some sort of presence. In many different civilizations across the world and human history, injustices have been pushed upon a certain group of people. Since the black slave trade existed, people have thrown injustices in the face of Black people. Martin Luther King Jr. (a face for the civil rights movement) writes about the injustices that face the human race in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. King talks about the responsibilities, rights and injustice that all people face. Responsibilities come in many different shapes and forms. King talks about the responsibilities people are held to by law. “One may well ask: ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws.
One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obeyjust 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”. It can be interpreted from the letter that no man has a larger responsibility than that of his responsibility to his fellow man. The boundaries of laws are not confining in the sense of justice. Unjust laws are unjust in their unfair distribution of rights to man. “Ajust law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.
Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust”. It is our right as members of the human race to be able to express ourselves, When King describes segregation as something that “distorts the soul and damages the personality” (King 8). it’s hard not to see the points King is making. The rights of man should never be suppressed due to the color of their skin. The injustices of segregation are well defined in King’s letter. “Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in havtng an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest”.
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The use of laws in twisted manners is what makes a law unjust. Laws don‘t have to be twisted and be used in a twisted way to prove a point. either. “Over the past few years l have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it isjust as wrong, or perhaps even more so. to use moral means to preserve immoral ends” (King 19). Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from Birmingham Jail no only states the injustice of laws but gives examples of the way laws are used to suppress the soul of fellow man. King makes it clear that the right and responsibilities of man are that to not be infringed upon.
