Letter from Birmingham Jail journal analysis

As I was reading Letter from Birmingham Jail, one of the things that really stood out to me was Martin Luther King Jr. sense of compassion, understanding, and being able to look at things in a positive way. "But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms." (MLKJ, 588) Throughout the quote above, King shows a great sense of patients. The clergymen in whom he is writing the letter to have had him put into jail. They have done nothing to help King in his journey to gain civil rights for all African Americans. But yet, he still treats them with a mature attitude. He does not lash out or use hateful words. King simply states that he is going to try and answer to the clergymen in the most reasonable way possible. King also has a way of looking at life as the glass half full, in a positive way. All of the set backs that King faced he looked at as an opportunity. He used the setbacks to give himself more determination to reach the dreams that he had envisioned. He used these setbacks to make his dreams into reality. I think that King’s sense of compassion, understanding, and being able to look at things in a positive way is what made him one of the most influential and great people that America has known. We as people can learn from these qualities that he possessed, to in turn make not only our own lives better, but also the people’s around us.