Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963)
Context
Birmingham had long had a reputation as one of the most racist and violent cities in the South. Starting in 1947 a series of bombings targeted the homes of African Americans who had moved into previously all-white neighborhoods. The Ku Klux Klan operated openly and was widely believed to be responsible for these attacks. When the outspoken black minister the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth formed the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights to press for civil rights, the terrorists struck his home and church. Because no one was apprehended for any of the more than fifty explosions, Birmingham blacks concluded that the police were in league with the bombers. Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor, an outspoken segregationist, used all resources at his disposal to preserve the Jim Crow system (laws and social practices that segregated and discriminated against African Americans).
Connor's heavy-handed methods aroused the ire of more temperate civic leaders, who...
