How Martin Luther King Was Influenced By Plato

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Finding something or someone that influences you is hard. But in Martin Luther King case, it seemed a breeze. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was influenced by Plato’s “The Myth of the Cave” in so many ways.
Plato talks about living in an underground den, chained against the walls, couldn’t do anything about it. Some being there since childhood. Letter From Birmingham Jail basically the same aspect, it talks about being arrested and thrown in jail for something they believed in, especially Dr. Martin Luther King. He was arrested for believing in non-segregation, freedom of speech, and blacks/whites having the same rights.
Like Plato, Martin Luther King talks about using your knowledge as good or evil. But in King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, people were using what they knew in an evil way. They thought since they had more rights, they could do what ever they wanted, to whom ever they wanted to. Dr. King was fighting for that, he thought there were creative injustice laws. He states in Letter from Birmingham Jail that:
“There are just and unjust laws, a unjust law is a code
that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on
itself. This is difference made legal, but a just law is a code
that a majority compels on a minority to follow that is willingto follow itself. This is sameness made legal.”(Pg. 113)
Dr. King goes on give more examples of just and unjust laws. When he states that “unjust is a code inflicted upon minority which the minority had no part in enacting or creating because they did not have the right to vote”(pg. 113). There are some instances when a law is just on it’s face, but unjust in it’s application; in other words, the law is right but done in the wrong way. For instances Martin Luther King was arrested for parading with out a permit.
Martin Luther King talks so much about unjust and just laws in Letter from Birmingham Jail, it i...