King's point

In "Letter from Birmingham Jail", Martin Luther King Jr is responding to a letter written by clergymen who were trying to stop the demonstrations and campaigns occurring in Birmingham. King describes these demonstrations as nonviolent direct action that he considers the only option after all other alternatives such as negotiation and self-purification have been used. King describes his acts and reasoning, "freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." Overall, I think King is trying to make the clergymen and any other person in the US understand the reasoning behind the words and demonstrations.