Letter from Birmingham Jail

It says that people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws and to take direct action rather than waiting potentially forever for justice to come through the courts.

The letter, written in response to "A Call for Unity" during the 1963 Birmingham campaign, was widely published, and became an important text for the civil rights movement in the United States.

[6] The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) had met with the Senior Citizens Committee (SCC) following this protest in hopes to find a way to prevent larger forms of retaliation against segregation.

[7] The citizens of Birmingham's efforts in desegregation caught King's attention, especially with their previous attempts resulting in failure or broken promises.

King met with President John F. Kennedy on October 16, 1961, to address the concerns of discrimination in the south and the lack of action the government was taking; President Kennedy seemed to be in support of desegregation, but was slow to take action, with Birmingham officials refusing to leave office in an effort to prevent a younger generation of officials with less discriminatory beliefs being elected.

On April 10, Circuit Judge W. A. Jenkins Jr. issued a blanket injunction against "parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing".

[10] An ally smuggled in a newspaper from April 12, which contained "A Call for Unity", a statement by eight white Alabama clergymen against King and his methods.

[13] King's letter, dated April 16, 1963,[12] responded to several criticisms made by the "A Call for Unity" clergymen, who agreed that social injustices existed but argued that the battle against racial segregation should be fought solely in the courts, not the streets.

King began the letter by responding to the criticism that he and his fellow activists were "outsiders" causing trouble in the streets of Birmingham.

King wrote: "I was invited" by the SCLC's Birmingham affiliate, "because injustice is here" in what was probably the most racially-divided city in the country, with its brutal police, unjust courts, and many "unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches".

"[15] King also warned that if white people successfully rejected his nonviolent activists as rabble-rousing outside agitators, it could encourage millions of African Americans to "seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies, a development that will lead inevitably to a frightening racial nightmare.

"[18] Listing numerous ongoing injustices toward black people, including himself, King said, "Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, 'Wait.

'"[18] Along similar lines, King also lamented the "myth concerning time" by which white moderates assumed that progress toward equal rights was inevitable and so assertive activism was unnecessary.

[19] King called it a "tragic misconception of time" to assume that its mere passage "will inevitably cure all ills".

Alabama has used "all sorts of devious methods" to deny its black citizens their right to vote and thus preserve its unjust laws and broader system of white supremacy.

"[26] King asserted that the white church needed to take a principled stand or risk being "dismissed as an irrelevant social club".

[28] Instead of the police, King praised the nonviolent demonstrators in Birmingham "for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation.

Pastor Wyatt Tee Walker and his secretary Willie Pearl Mackey then began compiling and editing the literary jigsaw puzzle.