Letter from Birmingham Jail - Analysis | Milestone Documents - Milestone Documents

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

( 1963 ) Commentary by Paul T. Murray, Siena College
  • “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.” - Paragraph 4
  • “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.” - Paragraph 10
  • “We have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.” - Paragraph 12
  • “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was ‘well timed' in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’” - Paragraph 13
  • “One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.” - Paragraph 20
  • “I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. … who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.” - Paragraph 23
  • “Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. … Human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.” - Paragraph 26
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Martin Luther King, Jr. (Library of Congress)

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