Ethnic Studies > Fight Against Racial Segregation in Battle Royale and Letter from Birmingham City Jail

Since the beginning of man racial discrimination has run ramped amongst society. Many people have chosen violence as a response, but Ellison’s character and Martin Luther King have chosen a non violent reaction to fight against it. In Ellison’s “Battle Royale” a speech is given about social responsibility by a narrator who is a young, nameless black male. In “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” King wrote a letter to Alabama’s white clergymen about equal rights for African-Americans. I’ll discuss where the action takes place in both work and what they symbolize, how the grandfather’s message relates to King’s idea of nonviolent protest and how the briefcase with a scholarship to a “Negro college” is a “separate but equal” example of opportunities for African-Americans.

In both essays the battle and the jail are symbols that represent the power and authority of white people over blacks, where they place the characters based on their action, or for their opportunity to deliver a speech. In “Battle Royale” the narrator has to go through every torture that is pleasing the white men to be heard. In “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” Martin Luther King had already lost the fight and with his protest he faught back. In Ellison’s “Battle Royale” the action takes place in a ballroom of a hotel which was a smoker for the town’s white, high authority people. The narrator was invited to deliver his graduation speech but he was told to engage in a fight with his schoolmates, which was part of the entertainment that night. Before the fight takes place a magnificent naked blonde woman was shown, who represented the American dream, power, wealth and fame they could never have. The battle itself is also a symbol of a bigger fight within the narrator’s culture. “I felt superior to them in my way, and I didn’t like the manner in which we were all crowded together into the servant’s elevator. Nor did they like my being there” (Ellison). The characters in the battle were blindfolded with a white cloth and have been told to fight against each other. This represents the power and how much joy it gave the white high society to keep black people in the darkness, confusion and fear. The narrator’s invisibility faded into darkness and humility. In “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” Martin Luther King is already in jail because he lost the fight about social equality. He kept fighting for his and his people’s rights with a rhetorical tradition not only because it is effective but also because it spreads the faith of brotherhood and justice. In “Battle Royale” the narrator says “social equality” and everybody gets his attention. They make sure ‘equality’ was a mistake and tell the narrator “you’ve got to know your place at all times” (Ellison). Being told to engage in a fight blindfolded against your own people as an entertainment for white high authority people and being placed in jail because you were fighting for your own people’s rights represents the power and authority of white men over blacks.

In “Battle Royale” the grandfather’s message relates to Martin Luther King’s notion of nonviolent protest. King realized that the best strategy to liberate African-Americans and gain them rights was to use nonviolent forms of protest. Martin Luther King in “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” is using nonviolence strategy, optimism, method of careful reasoning, peaceful persuasion and creative solutions and he is certain that his arguments will win over his audience. King is using emotions, appeals to authority, and a sense of goodwill to establish a certain atmosphere within the first three paragraphs of his letter to help him convince his audience. In the first paragraph with “My Dear Fellow Clergymen” King appeals to the authority or reputation of his audience because the use of the word “dear” first allows his audience to be clear that his intentions are not negative. King uses terms such as “dear”, “good will”, “genuine”, “sincere”, “patient”, and “reasonable” to convey a sense of goodwill and friendliness. In “Battle Royale” the narrator’s grandfather says to “keep up the good fight,” “live with your head in the lion’s mouth,” and “overcome ‘em with yeses, under mine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open” (Ellison). The narrator was puzzled by this message and he had difficulty to understand it. He followed his grandfather’s path even knowing it might not be the right thing to do. The narrator became a desirable conduct and was praised by white people in his town and he believed in the rightness of things. Regardless of all the terror he had to go through to have the opportunity to deliver his speech he swallowed all the blood he had in his mouth and started to talk moderate and without violence just as white people expected him to do it. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” explains the reasons behind and the methods of nonviolent civil disobedience. It gently expresses King’s disappointment with those who are generally supportive of equal rights for African-Americans. He wanted to eliminate the use of violence as a means to manage and establish cooperative ways of interacting. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (King) King knew that any violence on the part of his civil rights workers would lead to violent counterattacks from segregationists. He knew this would only lead his followers to harm and death. “The purpose of our direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation” (King). Ellison’s character was haunted throughout his life with his grandfather’s message and he was afraid to act differently which made him to become a praised man by white people. Martin Luther King’s nonviolence protest put his followers on the moral high ground and made the brutality of racists very apparent.

The narrator of “Battle Royal” lived his life under the illusion that everybody had an equal chance in life. He didn’t know that his briefcase with a scholarship to a “Negro college” was a “separate but equal” example of opportunities for African-Americans. He desperately wanted and tried to please everyone, thinking that if he did, he would eventually rise and become someone great. His speech won him great appreciation, but the town used him as a token and they didn’t have respect for him as a person. He was trapped in a body of inferior qualities and would never amount to anything more than that. The setting of “Battle Royale” was after slavery had been abolished and this was the time when blacks were free, but looked upon and treated with less than equality. In the briefcase there was an official envelop with a short message inside that said: “Keep This Nigger-Boy Running.” This means that his whole life people would look at him as a black person. Martin Luther King on the other hand was very clear about this problem and started to fight against it. He set out to bring equality for people everywhere. King wanted the white moderates to recognize the continuing urgency for equality.

The characters from “Battle Royale” and “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” had dreams of equality. They both choose a nonviolent method and their words as a powerful weapon to fight for their rights and belief throughout the stories. Ellison’s character was chasing his dream that he can make a difference and he continually ignored the reality of his situation, while Martin Luther King engaged in a direct action to fight for his dream.