Martin Luther King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail

Locked up in a jail in Birmingham, Alabama, after leading an illegal protest in Albany, Georgia, Martin Luther King was facing his darkest hour. The campaign he organized was in tatters, with King and other leaders arrested. Meanwhile, the politically moderate whites he hoped to persuade to his cause questioned his tactics. A group of eight white clergymen wrote an open letter to King in Birmingham, accusing him of creating civil unrest, and calling his act of civil disobedience “unwise and untimely” — not allowing time for the political system to change. King’s response was one of the most eloquent treatises on civil rights in the 20th century.

On this day, April 16, in 1963 Martin Luther King wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” He composed it over the course of day, writing on a legal pad provided by his lawyers, margins of a newspaper, and, after running out of both of the above, toilet paper.

King’s response to the wrong-time, wrong-place accusation was succinct. “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here” he said. “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” As for his incitements, King said, the confrontation is the point: “The purpose of the direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. “