TALKING ABOUT STYLE

Carefully used subordination can create powerful effects. Some particularly fine examples come from Martin Luther King Jr.

Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters;…when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you;…when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”;…when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

– Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail”