Why did martin luther king mention socrates in his letter

MLK ON CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963) addressed to Christian and Jewish clergy, Martin Luther King offers a defense of civil disobedience, both in this particular case and as a general policy. He has several goals:   He wants to justify “non-violent direct action sitting.” For example, he wants to defend the moral right of black people to sit in places reserved for “Whites only" and refusing to leave until they are arrested. He offers an argument that against the principle (apparently defended by many members of the clergy) that “Outsiders do not have a right to participate in the political or moral life of a community.” King’s response: unjust laws are never purely local in their effects. For one thing, they indicate that the overarching system (e.g. federal law) has structural problems with it; these problems may well result in problems for many people. King’s essay also argues for a distinction between legality and morality. He notes that there are plenty of cases (e.g., Nazi Germany, Ancient Rome, Biblical stories, etc.) in which obeying a law could be immoral. He thinks that this can happen even in a democracy. That is, the mere fact that a majority has voted for a law does not mean that you are morally obliged to obey that law. BACKGROUND TO KING’S LETTER “History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.” While the history of race relations in the US (and especially in the states like Alabama, where King is writing from) is long and complex, King mentions a number of people and thinkers that are worth noting:     Colonial Times and Revolutionary War. Slavery was an issue from the beginning of the United States (during the Revolutionary War, several British leaders promised to end slavery if it won, which may have helped convince Southern neutrals and loyalists to join the rebels). In the original drafts of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson (who was himself a slaveholder) outlined a commitment to eliminating slavery in the US (so, he meant “all men are created equal” quite literally). This draft was vetoed by the Southern representatives in the Continental Congress. Jefferson hoped that slavery would slowly die of its own accord, but it actually expanded between 1776 and 1861. The UK outlawed slavery in 1833. The US Civil War (1861 to 1865) led to the end of legalized slavery. After the war, the federal government engaged in a project of “Reconstruction” aimed at, among other things, establishing the rights of African Americans in the southern states. This was extremely unpopular among southern whites, however, and northern politicians eventually lost the political will to enforce it. The infamous Supreme Court decision Plessy v Ferguson (1896) upheld laws instituting racial segregation, so long it was “separate but equal.” Again, the hope was that southern states would come to equality “on their own,” but the decision effectively destroyed the political power of southern African Americans until 1964. Brown v Board of Ed (1954) held that racial segregation was “inherently unequal.” It overturned Plessy v Fergusson. Many southern states resisted this ruling, sometimes violently. In Alabama (shortly after King’s letter), the KKK bombed a church, and killed four girls. The governor George Wallace swore that he would support "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and tried his best to block the desegregation of schools. President John F.