03.05 Purposeful Structure in King's Letter Recall the writing prompt for this unit: What makes King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" powerful and effective? After reading King's letter, answer the question by analyzing how he uses structure and language purposefully in his text. Provide specific examples from the text to support your analysis. Your study of structure in this assignment will begin to help you answer this question and respond to the prompt later in the unit. Using what you learned in the lesson, complete the following chart and respond to the analysis questions in complete sentences. Some parts of the chart are already completed for you. Use the activities from the lesson to help you complete the rest of the chart. The part from “Letter from Birmingham Jail” What is the main idea of this part? What is the tone of this paragraph? What is King’s purpose with this part? How is it connected to the ideas before or after it? Heading The heading shows that King is in jail. Not applicable He hopes to show the injustice of the situation. Not applicable Greeting King addresses “fellow clergymen.” Kind He shows that he is also a clergyman and that he considers himself a part of the group he is addressing. The whole letter is written to these clergymen who criticized King for taking action. Paragraph 1 Patient Paragraph 2 The steps that King and others have taken to try to end discrimination and the reason for choosing Birmingham as the site for their protest Factual Paragraph 3 Passionate He shows how foolish it is for the clergymen to say “wait” for change. He shows that change must happen soon. Paragraph 4 Paragraph 5 Paragraph 6 Paragraph 7 By fighting racial injustice, we are not causing problems, rather we are revealing the problem. He wants to remind the pastors that he and other activists are not causing problems by protesting; instead, they are revealing the problems in society. Paragraph 8 Paragraph 9 Paragraph 10 The Church used to speak up and cause society to change, but now it accepts injustice and does not fight for others. The paragraph before it is also about the inaction of the current church. Paragraph 11 Reflective It is a new thought reflecting on the length of the letter and signaling the close of the text. Paragraph 12 Closing He hopes that the pastors will join his cause and change society.