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

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 hoped to create a more favorable image for their city. These leaders spearheaded an effort to oust Connor by shifting the form of city government from three commissioners to a mayor and a city council. On April 2, 1963, Birmingham voters rejected Connor and elected Albert Boutwell, a moderate segregationist, as their mayor. The losers immediately sued to prevent the new administration from taking office. For a time Birmingham had two competing city governments.

In January 1963 the SCLC decided to make Birmingham the site of its next major civil rights drive. The SCLC had suffered a serious setback the previous year in Albany, Georgia, where, despite months of nonviolent struggle and hundreds of arrests, African Americans were unable to wrest any concessions from an intransigent city government. Shuttlesworth, the most prominent Birmingham civil rights activist, assured the SCLC board that his city would be different; Connor could be counted on to react in his usual heavy-handed fashion. King also had a larger objective in mind: He hoped that by creating a crisis in Birmingham, he could force President John F. Kennedy to take much-needed action on civil rights.

After a delay in demonstrations until the Boutwell-Connor runoff election was resolved, protests began on April 3 with sit-ins and picketing at downtown department stores. On April 10 Judge W. A. Jenkins issued an injunction prohibiting King and other civil rights leaders from participating in or encouraging any civil disobedience. King decided to defy the court order, and on Good Friday, April 12, he, the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, and more than fifty other demonstrators were arrested. They were taken to the Birmingham City Jail, where King was placed in solitary confinement.

On April 12 a statement by eight white clergymen—a rabbi, a Catholic bishop, and six prominent Protestant leaders—appeared in the Birmingham News under the title “A Call for Unity.” They characterized the demonstrations as “unwise and untimely” and claimed that the protests were likely “incite to hatred and violence.” The authors praised the Birmingham media and police for the “calm manner” in which they handled the civil rights forces and urged blacks to withdraw their support from King's efforts. They implied that King should return to Atlanta and allow local residents to resolve their differences without outside interference.

King probably read the churchmen's declaration in a newspaper smuggled into his cell. Taylor Branch, author of Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63, credits Harvey Shapiro, an editor for the New York Times Magazine, for planting the idea that King write a letter from prison during the Albany campaign. That message never materialized, but now King realized the time was right. Almost immediately he began formulating a response. When King's lawyer, Clarence Jones, visited him on April 16, the jailed civil rights leader handed Jones the newspaper with his notes scribbled in the margins. S. Jonathan Bass, author of Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Clergymen, and the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” describes what happened next. The Reverend Wyatt T. Walker, SCLC executive director, deciphered King's “chicken scratch” handwriting and dictated to his secretary, Willie Pearl Mackey, who typed the first rough copy. Lawyers returned the draft to King, who continued writing on scraps of paper provided by a black jail trustee. When he was released from jail on April 20, the bulk of the letter was composed, but King, according to Bass, “continued writing, editing, and revising drafts several days after the date on the manuscript” (p. 135).

The SCLC sent the letter to national media in early May, but there was little immediate reaction. The New York Post printed excerpts in its May 19 edition. The American Friends Service Committee published the full text of the letter as a pamphlet on May 28. It subsequently appeared in Christian Century, the New Leader, Atlantic Monthly, and Ebony. A slightly revised version was included in King's 1964 book Why We Can't Wait.