martin luther king jr.
Letter from Birmingham Jail
[1963]
IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, "Jim Crow" laws ensured that whites and blacks in America remained segregated in all areas of public life—on buses, on railroads, in schools, in restaurants, and elsewhere. However, in 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that separating students of different races into different schools was unconstitutional. That decision signaled the beginning of the end of the segregation laws. In the following years, schools across the country would be integrated, followed by other public facilities and public transportation.
The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) gained wide exposure as a civil rights leader in 1955, when, while serving as a pastor in Montgomery, Alabama, he led a boycott against that city's bus lines that resulted in their desegregation the following year. In 1957, after the success of the bus boycott, King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and began a series of nonviolent campaigns aimed at ending racial segregation across the South. In 1963, the SCLC led a series of highly publicized protests and demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, that proved to be one of the turning points in the struggle for civil rights.
King, who was well versed in the philosophy and practice of nonviolent civil disobedience, understood that one powerful application of this philosophy was to disobey unjust laws publicly and to accept the consequences of that disobedience. Consequently, when a local judge issued a blatantly unconstitutional injunction that forbade King and others from engaging in protest activities, he defied the order and went to jail. While in jail, he read, with dismay, an open letter from eight moderate, white clergymen in Birmingham condemning the demonstrations as "unwise and untimely . . . extreme measures [that were] led . . . by outsiders." In its conclusion, the letter states, "We . . . urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense."
King was disheartened by this rebuke from the very Christian and Jewish leaders he had hoped would support his cause. He used their letter as the platform for what would become one of the most famous arguments for civil disobedience ever written: his "Letter from Birmingham Jail." Because he wrote this response to fellow members of the clergy, and because he rooted his activism in Christianity, King bases his argument firmly in the Judeo-Christian tradition. He invokes passages from both the Old and New Testaments to support two different propositions: that segregation is unjust in the eyes of God, and that the Judeo-Christian tradition allows, and even at times requires, disobedience to unjust laws.
The "Letter from Birmingham Jail" is dated April 16, 1963. King could not send the letter directly to those it addressed; friends had to smuggle it out of the jail in pieces and reassemble it later. The letter was included in King's book Why We Can't Wait, which was published in 1964, the year that King became, at thirty-five, the youngest person ever to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
The "Letter from Birmingham Jail" has long been considered a casebook of different rhetorical approaches. King takes great pains to establish the ethos of a trusted and knowledgeable member of the clergy, but he also makes powerful appeals to justice and fairness, and his arguments about just and unjust laws give an excellent example of deductive reasoning in action.
My Dear Fellow Clergymen,
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliate organizations all across the South—one being the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Whenever necessary and possible we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented and when the hour came we lived up to our promises. So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because we were invited here. I am here because I have basic organizational ties here.
Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth century prophets[194] left their little villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Graeco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of
freedom beyond my particular hometown. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.[195]
Moreover, 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. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives in the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.
You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham. 5 But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being. I am sure that each of you would want to go beyond the superficial social analyst who looks merely at effects, and does not grapple with underlying causes. I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative.
In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: (1) collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive, (2) negotiation, (3) self-purification, and (4) direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community.
Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country. Its injust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than any city in this nation. These are the hard, brutal and unbelievable facts. On the basis of these conditions Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.
Then came the opportunity last September to talk with some of the leaders of the economic community. In these negotiating sessions certain promises were made by the merchants—such as the promise to remove the humiliating racial signs from the stores. On the basis of these promises Rev. Shuttlesworth[196] and the leaders of the