Process Paper​
My topic for NHD is MLK’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” but more specifically the four steps to a successful non-violent campaign that he stated in that letter. I chose this topic by searching through the sheet of suggested topics handed out in class, this topic itself really stood out to me because I have always been interested in the rights for the negro community and how they came so far considering it really was only a little over 2 decades ago that these things were happening. The specific topic on the handout was only “Martin Luther King Jr. Taking A Stand” this itself did stand out but i realized very quickly that that was not a specific enough topic at all, and there was way too much information about his taking a stand for civil rights for me to focus on only that, I needed to go a step further.
I began researching more about MLK, all the things that he had done in his lifetime, there was so much and I knew I needed to go more and more in depth to one focal point where I can find things that the average person does not know about. Things such as his I Have A Dream speech would not be the best because that is something that people know of. I first decided to focus on his letter from a Birmingham jail, but soon realized I needed to go even more in depth then that. Next I went and read thoroughly through all of his letter, and it was very interesting to go and realize just how much he talked about.
This led me to thinking that I needed to go even much further into the works of MLK to really learn something new that I had thought of before. So I finalized my topic and thesis statement into talking only of the four steps to a successful non-violent campaign and protest that King believed so strongly in. The one source that was most helpful for all of this research was definitely the Letter itself, I found it incredible that I could find the original text. Also how I could read it myself and learn just how much detail and thought that he put into this one letter that he wrote in such a small amount of time because he really was pouring his heart out.
While researching on Martin Luther King Jr. I ran into many problems that required me making decisions to steer my research in one way or another, a few of these are deciding where to point my opinions on this letter, knowing exactly where to focus on the letter, and also deciding that my original thesis was still much too broad even though I had considered it as focused as it needed to be in the beginning of my research. First off I had to decide if I wanted to say that the four steps were successfully followed through or not. Than the next dead end was focusing down my thesis even more then I had thought I had before turning it from a broad statement like “MLK’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail changed the way protesting and taking a stand took place in the 1960’s” into “MLK’s four steps to a successful non-violent campaign stated in his Letter From a Birmingham Jail were successfully followed through to help push the civil rights movement forward.” this made my research a ton easier.
This topic is still a very relevant subject and is not something that has died away, though some people wish to believe it did. It will be a much more improved world when civil rights are spread equally throughout people of all races. Martin Luther King Jr’s dream was to make this happen, and hopefully one day it will be but for now there is still much further we can go. King took a stand and stood up for what he believed in and his work is still relevant to this day.