In Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s well composed letter, “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, directed to the clergymen of Alabama, was written while in the solitude of his cell and during the extremely volatile era that was the civil rights movement. In his letter his main purpose is to persuade the reader in a heartfelt yet convicting voice, into envision what he’s trying to accomplish and reaching out to the clergymen in joining his struggle which is the end of segregation and injustice made to his people. However, his intentions go beyond the clergymen in Alabama, he consistently mentions the “white and black moderate” (6) and the country as a whole, making it clear his intended audience was those who read it. He grabs the reader’s attention by establishing his credibility by explaining why his actions are justifiable through his personal experience. With these facts he established the symbol of authority that he is in what his people were suffering, which brings justification to his cause and ultimately his urgent demand for a course of action. His rhetorical appeal to ethos on the matter of racial discrimination and injustice for he has the capacity and experience. He establishes trustworthiness with the clergymen by starting his letter with “My dear fellow clergymen:”(1) giving the clergymen a sense of familiarity with King so as not to dismiss him, which would be enough to persuade them into reading and understanding what he has to say. He then states how he is “the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference” (1), and how he was invited to Alabama by “the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights”(1) Thus establishing his intellect and expertise in the matter of racial discrimination. These reasons would be sufficient to establish the attention of a reader, but king knowing the stubbornness of some people during this era, being an educated black man meant nothing to them. King knew he had to take a more straight forward approach, and what better way to reach the reader than painting a colorful picture in the readers head. King then shifts his argument to pathos were he begins to disclose all the hardships the “Negro” has to endure. Painting vivid images of suffering such as “But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at