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

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

King establishes a tone of rational dialogue as he begins his letter to the eight clergymen. He explains that he rarely responds to critics, but since they are “men of genuine good will” who are sincere in their criticism, he is making an exception. He hopes that they will find his remarks “patient and reasonable.” Because they had questioned his presence in Birmingham, he relates that he was invited to their city by the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. A more compelling reason, however, was the pervasive racial oppression in Birmingham. King compares himself to the apostle Paul, who spread the Christian faith among the Gentiles. Paul traveled more widely than any of the early Christian missionaries, preaching and establishing churches throughout Greece and Asia Minor. The “Macedonian call” mentioned in the third paragraph refers to Acts 16:9, in which a man appears to Paul in a dream, asking him to “come over into Macedonia, and help us.” During his journeys Paul was persecuted for spreading unpopular beliefs and spent more than four years in prison before being executed by Roman authorities. Three of his famous epistles were written from jail. King justifies his arrest by invoking Paul's sufferings—an example that the Christian ministers could appreciate. He further defends his presence in Alabama by citing the “interrelatedness of all communities.” King asserts that people living outside Alabama cannot ignore blatant racism in Birmingham. Every citizen has an obligation to act against injustice wherever it may be found, King explains. Those who consider him an “outside agitator” reveal their own “narrow, provincial” outlook.

King takes the clergymen to task for their statement deploring the Birmingham demonstrations. Instead of worrying about threats to public order, they should be concerned about racism and inequality in their city—the “underlying causes” that gave rise to the African American protests. Because the white leadership had been unresponsive to repeated appeals to dismantle the Jim Crow system, King contends that black citizens of Birmingham had “no alternative” other than to take to the streets.

King goes on to outline the stages of his nonviolent crusade. Fact finding was the first phase. Among the damaging information uncovered were Birmingham's long history of unpunished attacks on its black citizens and the failure of city fathers to negotiate in good faith with civil rights advocates. King reminds the clergymen that Birmingham merchants had not honored an earlier agreement to remove Jim Crow signs from their stores. African American activists also were mindful of the need to defeat Connor and thus delayed their demonstrations until the conclusion of the runoff election. Now the merchants must deal with the economic consequences of protests timed to coincide with the Easter shopping season. These actions were not irresponsible, King insists. Rather, black leaders exercised great restraint in the face of numerous provocations.

The second stage was negotiation. The clergymen had criticized King for resorting to confrontation instead of negotiating to achieve his goals. King claims that he, too, desires negotiation but explains that sometimes pressure must be applied to bring reluctant parties to the bargaining table. Rather than avoiding conflict and tension, he freely admits his intention to create a crisis in order to expose the evils of segregation. In support of his position, he cites Socrates, who maintained that mental tension stimulates intellectual growth.

The eight Birmingham clerics had claimed that the Birmingham demonstrations were “untimely.” They were not the only observers voicing this objection. Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the Washington Post, among others, had complained that the new Boutwell administration should be given a chance to show that it was more open to change than the outgoing Connor regime. King rejects this reasoning. He maintains that those in positions of power cannot be expected to surrender their privileges voluntarily; they must be persuaded forcefully to do the right thing. In this assertion, he echoes the words of the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” He also cites the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr to support his contention that change is more difficult for groups than for individuals.

King points out that any action disrupting the status quo is likely to be considered poorly timed by those who are comfortable with existing arrangements. For those suffering from oppression, however, change cannot come soon enough. He then launches into an eloquent defense of his movement by concentrating on the word wait. Whites who counsel patience in the quest for civil rights, he asserts, have not personally experienced the harsh sting of discrimination. King explains why he and other African Americans are unwilling to slow the pace of their crusade. He quotes the nineteenth-century British jurist and prime minister William Gladstone, saying that “‘justice … delayed is justice denied.'” To drive home the devastating impact of segregation, he recites a weary litany of potent examples of the injuries inflicted by racism. These range from lynch mobs to whites' refusal to use courtesy titles when addressing African Americans. Perhaps the most poignant is the plight of a black father who must explain to his young daughter why she cannot attend the amusement park she has seen advertised on television. One wonders whether this girl is one of King's own children. At the conclusion of this powerful passage, he pleads with the clergymen to understand the “legitimate and unavoidable impatience” felt by African Americans.

King next addresses the most difficult question raised by the Birmingham clergymen: How can he encourage his followers to violate some laws and at the same time urge whites to observe such legal decisions as Brown v. Board of Education? Here he draws on the concept of “natural law” developed by Saint Thomas Aquinas and other Catholic philosophers. A man-made law is just if it accords with the divinely established code to uplift the human spirit. All such laws should be obeyed. King cites the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber and the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich to give ecumenical sanction to his contention that segregation laws are immoral and therefore should not be obeyed. Other examples of unjust laws are those applied to one group (African Americans) but not another (whites) and laws adopted by legislatures, such as Alabama's, that exclude participation by large numbers of their citizens. Laws also may be unjust if used to deprive citizens of their constitutionally guaranteed rights.

King maintains that those who advocate civil disobedience do not contribute to anarchy. In the tradition of Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi, he asserts that those who violate unjust laws must do so “openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.” Rather than expressing defiance, the protestor shows respect for the law by acting to remove injustice from a community. King cites several well-known examples of civil disobedience of which the eight clergymen would most certainly approve. These include the biblical story from the book of Daniel in which Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are cast into a fiery furnace for refusing to worship the golden idol erected by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. King contends that in the modern era, religious people have a moral duty to confront Hitler's anti-Semitic codes and the atheistic decrees of Communist regimes.

The longest section of the letter addresses the role of the white moderate in the struggle for civil rights. King hits hard at the clergymen who objected to the Birmingham demonstrations, expressing his frustration with liberals who claimed to support the goal of equal rights while objecting to the methods of the movement. He accuses them of being almost as harmful as members of the Ku Klux Klan or the White Citizens' Council, a supremacist organization. The main reason for King's impatience is the moderates' frequently expressed insistence that change must be peaceful and orderly. These critics of the movement fail to understand the true source of the conflicts that surface during civil rights protests. These conflicts are not caused by those participating in civil disobedience; rather, the demonstrations bring to the surface long-standing community tensions. If they are to be resolved, they must first be exposed to public scrutiny.

Many detractors also denounced civil rights activists for precipitating violence from those opposed to integration. King has no patience with this line of reasoning. Accusing nonviolent demonstrators of causing violence is a classic example of blaming the victim. According to King, these critics suffer from distorted vision; they should defend those being attacked and condemn their attackers.

White moderates frequently argued that civil rights advocates like King were pressing too hard to transform southern society. If only African Americans could be more patient, they insisted, change would come in time. King forcefully rebuts this argument. Time is neutral, King insists; it can be used for good or evil. There is nothing inevitable about progress; the passage of time does not guarantee the solution of social problems. People of goodwill cannot afford to be silent in the face of injustice; they must “use time creatively” to realize “the promise of democracy.”

The eight clergymen had described the Birmingham protestors as extremists. King at first repudiates this label. Rather than viewing himself as an extremist, he claims that he is a moderate caught between Uncle Toms who have acquiesced to segregation and the Black Muslims who charge that the white man is “the devil.” In this context, the true extremists are those advocating separation from American society. Believers in nonviolent, direct action seek inclusion in the larger community, not its destruction. To call them extremists is an error. King even argues that demonstrations against segregation have therapeutic value. They allow African Americans to release their many “pent-up resentments and latent frustrations.” Whites should not see them as a threat to the status quo but as a creative alternative to mass violence.

After considering the extremist label, however, King reverses course and embraces it. “Was not Jesus an extremist?” he asks. He then recites a long list of heroic figures who could be considered extremists: the Old Testament prophet Amos; the New Testament evangelist Paul; the Christian reformer Martin Luther; the English preacher and writer John Bunyan; Abraham Lincoln, who ended slavery; and Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. All of these men were seen as extremists in their time. King implies that the United States needs more visionaries of this sort.

Although King harshly criticizes those moderates who had failed to defend the civil rights movement, he praises a handful of southern whites who risked persecution and ostracism by their public support of the movement. These include the Atlanta editor Ralph McGill, the Georgia novelist Lillian Smith, the North Carolina writer Harry Golden, the South Carolina author James McBride Dabbs, the Alabama journalist Anne Braden, and Sarah Patton Boyle, who advocated racial integration in Virginia schools.

King then launches a sustained critique of established religion in the South. He acknowledges a few instances of courageous action by white churches, but these are “notable exceptions.” During the Montgomery bus boycott, for example, the leaders of white congregations remained silent or actively opposed the protest. The same was true in Birmingham, where King's organization reached out to white denominations but was consistently rebuffed. King scorns the view that religion should focus solely on the hereafter and avoid involvement in social issues. He squarely embraces the Social Gospel tradition that calls upon Christians to work for the welfare of their fellow humans. The South was known for its strong religious institutions, yet King notes the ironic correlation of high rates of church membership and the popularity of racist governors, like Mississippi's Ross Barnett and Alabama's George Wallace. As the scion of a long line of Baptist ministers, King confesses his love of the church and, at the same time, his deep disappointment in it. He calls upon his white brethren to emulate early Christians who were not afraid to become “disturbers of the peace” while following their divine calling. A few members of the clergy had joined the movement in confronting segregation in the South, but not nearly enough. Nevertheless, despite the opposition of organized religion, King expresses confidence that the movement he leads eventually will be victorious because both the principles of American democracy and the “eternal will of God” require it.

King's final paragraphs dwell on the clergymen's ironic praise of the Birmingham police force for keeping order during the demonstrations. Three weeks after their statement was published, Connor ordered his men to turn police dogs and fire hoses on peaceful demonstrators, revealing to the world the lengths to which Alabama segregationists were willing to go in defense of the Jim Crow system. King points out that the police may have been restrained in public but were harsh in their treatment of jailed activists. He faults the ministers for not praising the discipline and courage of the African American protestors, who remained nonviolent in the face of great provocation. King's clerical critics reveal their one-sided perspective when they defend the white guardians of racial privilege and consistently find fault with those who seek to change this oppressive system.

King closes his letter on a brotherly note, apologizing for the length of his missive and asking for understanding. He expresses the hope that one day they may be able to meet person to person without the antagonism and misunderstanding that currently surround them.