Unjust Laws Historical Essay Example

Nobody likes to be the center of something unjust. The United States had a big problem with many kinds of unjust laws like the Black codes that limited the freedom of African Americans by making them sign a contract every year for labor. In the years following the reconstruction, the south renewed the laws turning them into the Jim Crow laws that denied African Americans the right to vote and maintain stable jobs. Even though Alabama ratified the 14th amendment on 13 July 1868, they did not give formerly enslaved people citizenship or equal protection under the laws they had given African American people injustice. To recognize these events Martin Luther King decided to deliver a letter to the clergymen titled “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” where he wrote about how the white people have made laws that were once just into unjust laws by stopping Africans from doing what was constitutionally allowed. King successfully explained various ways as to how the people of Birmingham have applied unjust laws toward the African American heritage by telling his own experience with this happening.

Many people hear about other people getting arrested for something that they did not do but they do not think it will ever happen to them or anyone they know until it happens. King stated, “Sometimes a law is just on its surface and unjust in its application.” When people get arrested it sounds nice to hear that someone bad is off of the streets but it could just be an unjust conviction. Ed Brown, Arthur Ellington, and Henry Shields were three men who were tortured and beaten by the police force into confessing, when the three men went to trial no one cared that these men can be seen in a lot of pain. In the end, the three men were sentenced to hanging by an all-white jury. They violated their fifth amendment right to due process of law as well as making them be a witness against themselves. King was also subjected to unjust treatment when he was arrested for protesting without a permit but he did not oppose the law for which he was arrested. The law is okay and not bad to have unless it is used to discriminate against any race of people. King uses logos to give a reason to how many laws are unjust for the African American community, King uses philosophy and reasoning to persuade people to see the evil behind his arrest. In 1931 a fight went on between Africans and white boys on a train in Scottsboro, Alabama. When the police caught word of this they arrested nine African American boys but none of the white boys were arrested. Two white girls came forward and claimed they were gang-raped on the train even though they all claimed innocence, they all went to trial, and eight of them were sentenced to death by an all-white court. One of the women Ruby Bates testified that “She was encouraged by Price to make the false accusation as a way of deflecting attention from possible charges of vagrancy or Mann Act,” because she was a prostitute. These were the reasons for false testimony that caused the boys to be unjustly accused. In 1906 Ed Jonson was arrested for sexually assaulting a woman with a leather strap even though he denied owning one. Jonson had provided numerous alibi witnesses at the trial but was convicted by an all-white jury.  While the court let the man have a stay of execution a mob broke into his cell and brutally murdered Jonson by public hanging. (Something about this being unjust). All of these are examples of the police arresting African Americans because they think that they are applying the law justly but in its application of not obeying the law is unjust.

An unjust law can be created in many ways. Laws are created by those who hold power. All the people in power in King's time were white men, so they created laws that benefited them. They did not want to give African Americans a lot of rights because that would make the white society have less power. King stated, “A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law.” People were not allowed to vote because many states used the grandfather clause which denied the descendants of slaves the right to vote. Many other things were put into place to stop African American people from doing what they were constitutionally allowed like the Jim Crow laws and the Black Codes. The Jim Crow laws were made by states that legalized segregation. They denied African American people the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education, and other good opportunities. The law started from the civil war until 1968. People who did not obey these restrictions would be jailed, fined, or even killed. When more African American people started to come to the United States the Jim Crow laws expanded and were enforced more seriously than they were before. They made it so that African Americans were not allowed to go into places like cemeteries and amusement parks; they also were not allowed to live in the same neighborhood as white people. In late 1865 states like Mississippi and South Carolina started making the Black codes to make African Americans show evidence of employment at the beginning of each year. If anyone were to leave their contract before it ended they would either be arrested or have to give up their previous wages. Africans who didn’t have parents or their parents were not able to support them had to be forced to be an apprentice and not be paid for their labor. King uses Ethos to point out how they are all the same because they have all been denied their rights. Throughout Alabama, a lot of these laws were put in place to prevent African Americans from becoming registered voters even though most of the population were Africans. 

Unjust laws are not judged from a moral perspective. They don't set limits fairly and are designed to put certain groups at a disadvantage. A barrier of thought is created giving whites a sense of power and allowing them to feel degraded.