hide caption. The eight clergy men called his present activity Teachers: The "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" has been adopted by the Common Core curriculum as a crucial document in American history for students to understand, along with the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Letter From Birmingham City Jail - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. April 16, 1963 My Dear Fellow Clergymen, While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom, if ever, do I pause to We have a commonality too - Earth. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. Jesus and other great reformers were extremists: "So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. That night King told the congregation he had no faith in the city's newly elected leader, Albert Boutwell, either. [7] The citizens of Birmingham's efforts in desegregation caught King's attention, especially with their previous attempts resulting in failure or broken promises. Anticipating the claim that one cannot determine such things, he again cited Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas by saying any law not rooted in "eternal law and natural law" is not just, while any law that "uplifts human personality" is just. In Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963, Kings campaign to end segregation at lunch counters and in hiring practices drew nationwide attention when police turned dogs and fire hoses on the demonstrators. Rabbi Grafman was on the bi-racial Community Affairs Committee and one of six clergy who met with President John F. Kennedy in 1963 to discuss Birminghams racial tensions. The universal appeal of Dr. Kings letter lies in the hope it provides the disinherited of the earth, the millions of voiceless poor who populate the planet from the garbage dumps of Calcutta to the AIDS villages of Haiti. He addressed the letter to eight white Alabama pastors who opposed his . After Durick retired, he returned to Alabama to live in a house in Bessemer until his death in 1994. Birmingham, Alabama, was known for its intense segregation and attempts to combat said racism during this time period. Altogether, King's letter was a powerful defense of the motivations, tactics, and goals of the Birmingham campaign and the Civil Rights Movement more generally. I always try to make this point because too many people dont make the connections to their daily lives. As an eternal statement that resonates hope in the valleys of despair, Letter From Birmingham City Jail is unrivaled, an American document as distinctive as the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation. While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. 5 Things We Can Learn from Rev. Though TIME dismissed the protests when they first occurred, that letter was included was included in the issue the following January in which King was named the Man of the Year for 1963. Alabama segregationist Bull Connor ordered police to use dogs and fire hoses on black demonstrators in May 1963. The eight clergy it was addressed to did not receive copies and didnt see it until it was published in magazine form. They needed large numbers to fill the jails and force white Birmingham to listen. Letter From Birmingham City Jail would eventually be translated into more than 40 languages. He also criticizes the claim that African Americans should wait patiently while these battles are fought in the courts. It was Good Friday. Banks, businesses and government offices are closed to honor the civil rights martyr every January. It's etched in my mind forever," he says. But by fall it and the city of Birmingham became rallying cries in the civil rights campaign. In the weeks leading up to the March on Washington, King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference used the letter as part of its fundraising efforts, and King himself used it as a basis for. [11] The letter provoked King, and he began to write a response to the newspaper itself. The letter was not published immediately. These readers were published for college-level composition courses between 1964 and 1968.[39]. George Wallaces harsh segregationist rhetoric, warning it could lead to violence. In 1967, King ended up spending another five days in. Video transcript. He was arrested for defying an injunction issued by a judge suppressing their rights to protest. [14] Referring to his belief that all communities and states were interrelated, King wrote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Bass in his book argued that Stallings and some of the other white clergy in many ways had been more thoughtful on racial issues than history has given them credit for. Pastor Wyatt Tee Walker and his secretary Willie Pearl Mackey then began compiling and editing the literary jigsaw puzzle. The force of the water was so strong it peeled off clothing, shredded skin and tossed children down the streets. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. Rabbi Grafman often pointed out that then-U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, The Washington Post, and others also said Kings efforts were ill-timed and that he should give the new city government a chance. '"[18] Declaring that African Americans had waited for the God-given and constitutional rights long enough, King quoted "one of our distinguished jurists" that "justice too long delayed is justice denied. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail". King first dispensed with the idea that a preacher from Atlanta was too much of an "outsider" to confront bigotry in Birmingham, saying, "I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all. In response, King said that recent decisions by the SCLC to delay its efforts for tactical reasons showed that it was behaving responsibly. The recent public displays of nonviolence by the police were in stark contrast to their typical treatment of Black people and, as public relations, helped "to preserve the evil system of segregation". An editor at The New York Times Magazine, Harvey Shapiro, asked King to write his letter for publication in the magazine, but the Times chose not to publish it. The Letter from Birmingham Jail, was "ostensibly addressed," to the clergymen of Alabama (Westbrook, par. President Kennedy seemed to be in support of desegregation, however, was slow to take action. After being arrested in Birmingham, Alabama, Dr. King wrote a letter that would eventually become one of the most important documents of the Civil Rights Movement. "Letter From a Birmingham Jail," written by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963, describes a protest against his arrest for non-violent resistance to racism. Lesson Transcript. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. King wrote his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in response to a public statement by eight white clergymen appealing to the local black population to use the courts and not the streets to secure civil rights. Segregation and apartheid were supported by clearly unjust lawsbecause they distorted the soul and damaged the psyche. It was that letter that prompted King to draft, on this day, April 16, the famous document known as Letter From a Birmingham Jail. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly: You cannot criticize the protest without first understanding the cause of it. All of them were harassed because of that statement.. Why was the letter from Birmingham written? Its the only livable planet we have. One day the South will recognize its real heroes."[29]. He insists that people have the moral responsibility to break unjust laws in a peaceful manner. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. It's been five decades since Martin Luther King Jr., began writing his famous "Letter From Birmingham Jail," a response to eight white Alabama clergymen who criticized King and worried the civil rights campaign would cause violence. In Jerusalem in 1983, Mubarak Awad, an American-educated clinical psychologist, translated the letter for Palestinians to use in their workshops to teach students about nonviolent struggle. "Birmingham grabbed the imagination. The speech was recorded by the Rev. And all others in Birmingham and all over America will be able to sing with new meaning: My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.". "People risked their lives here," says Jim Baggett, archivist for the Birmingham Public Library. King then states that he rarely responds to criticisms of his work and ideas. Grafman said the eight clergy were among Birminghams moderate leaders who were working for civil rights. Fred Shuttlesworth, defied an injunction against protesting on Good Friday in 1963. However, in his devotion to his cause, King referred to himself as an extremist. A response directed toward 8 Alabama clergymen who released a statement toward King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had begun to flood into Birmingham to protest the awful civil rights . "These eight men were put in the position of looking like bigots," Rabbi Grafman once said. Letter from the Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr. 6,690 ratings, 4.72 average rating, 655 reviews Letter from the Birmingham Jail Quotes Showing 1-30 of 33 "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. But I want you to go back and tell those who are telling us to wait that there comes a time when people get tired.". After reading an open letter from eight white clergymen in the local newspaper criticizing him and his fellow activists, MLK decided he might as well write back to let them know what was on his mind. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'" "Alone in jail, King plunges down into a kind of depression and panic combined," says Jonathan Rieder, a sociology professor at Barnard College who has written a new book on the letter called Gospel of Freedom. A Maryland woman helped piece together Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous " Letter from Birmingham Jail ." King wrote the letter in 1963 as a response to eight clergymen who. "I was invited" by our Birmingham affiliate "because injustice is here" in what is probably the most racially-divided city in the country, with its brutal police, unjust courts, and many "unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches". In the spring of 1963, in Birmingham, Ala., it seemed like progress was finally being made on civil rights. King began the letter by responding to the criticism that he and his fellow activists were "outsiders" causing trouble in the streets of Birmingham. "When we got on the cell block, cell blocks probably hold 600 people. The clergy members told him that civil disobedience was only useful until it became dangerous and then it was time for people to return to peace and quiet. Just as Dr. King had been inspired by Henry David Thoreaus essay Civil Disobedience, written in a Massachusetts jail to protest the Mexican-American War, a new generation of the globally oppressed embraced the letter as a source of courage and inspiration. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his letter from the Birmingham jail cell in response to criticisms made by a group clergymen who claimed that, while they agreed with King's ultimate aims. Bass noted the progressive sermons on racial issues preached by Stallings from his First Baptist pulpit; the spiritual and social leadership in the city by Rabbi Grafman, and the transformation of Bishop Durick into a civil rights crusader who was the only white on the platform during a memorial service for King at Memphis City Hall. King writes in Why We Can't Wait: "Begun on the margins of the newspaper in which the statement appeared while I was in jail, the letter was continued on scraps of writing paper supplied by a friendly Black trusty, and concluded on a pad my attorneys were eventually permitted to leave me. In April of 1963, Martin King intentionally violated an anti-protesting ordinance in Birmingham, Alabama, and was jailed on Good Friday. Dr. King was arrested and sent to jail for protesting segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham in 1963 was a hard place for blacks to live in. 7). Magazines, Or create a free account to access more articles. And the images that come out of here, it just, I think it seared into people's minds. The process of turning scraps of jailhouse newspaper and toilet paper into Letter From Birmingham Jail remains, in itself, a seminal achievement. [32] The complete letter was first published as "Letter from Birmingham City Jail" by the American Friends Service Committee in May 1963[33][34] and subsequently in the June 1963 issue of Liberation,[35] the June 12, 1963, edition of The Christian Century,[36] and the June 24, 1963, edition of The New Leader. Near the end of the Birmingham campaign, in an effort to draw together the multiple forces for peaceful change and to dramatize to the country and to the world the importance of solving the U.S. racial problem, King joined other civil rights leaders in organizing the historic March on Washington. Archbishop Desmond Tutu quoted the letter in his sermons, Jamaican reggae singer Bob Marley kept the text with him for good luck, and Ghanas Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumahs children chanted from it as though Dr. Kings text were a holy writ. They were arrested and held in solitary confinement in the Birmingham jail where King wrote his famous "Letter From Birmingham Jail." (Courtesy of Birmingham Public Library Archives) I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. 2023 TIME USA, LLC. As he sat in a solitary jail cell without even a mattress to sleep on, King began to pen a response to his critics on some scraps of paper. Make it clear to students . (Photo by NASA/Newsmakers). He also referred to the broader scope of history, when "'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never. Martin Luther King Jr., with the Rev. He wrote, "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension . They were arrested and held in solitary confinement in the Birmingham jail where King wrote his famous "Letter From Birmingham Jail." In January 1963, those same clergy had signed a letter in response to Gov. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Galileo was ordered to turn himself in to the Holy Office to begin trial for holding the belief that the read more, On April 12, 1770, the British government moves to mollify outraged colonists by repealing most of the clauses of the hated Townshend Act. On the day of his arrest, a group of clergymen wrote an open letter in which they called for the community to renounce protest tactics that caused unrest in the community, to do so in court and not in the streets. It was that letter that prompted King to draft, on this day, April 16, the famous document known as Letter From a Birmingham Jail. He is talking to the clergyman that they have no choice because they have been ignoring the fact that they can express unhappiness. As we approach another Dr. Martin Luther King Holiday, I have been reflecting on one of his most important writings, the Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Dr. King wrote this epic letter on April 16th, 1963 as a political prisoner. Dr. King and many civil rights leaders were in Birmingham as a part of a coordinated campaign of sit-ins and. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our, Digital a) The introductory essay stated that Martin Luther King Jr. and others were arrested on April 12, 1963 and that he spent more than a week in jail. Initially passed on June 29, 1767, the Townshend Act constituted an attempt by the British government to consolidate fiscal and political read more. The rising tide of civil rights agitation produced, as King had hoped, a strong effect on national opinion and resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, authorizing the federal government to enforce desegregation of public accommodations and outlawing discrimination in publicly owned facilities, as well as in employment. When King spent his nine days in the Birmingham jail, it was one of the most rigidly segregated cities in the South, although African Americans made up 40 percent of the population. Martin Luther King Jr. was behind bars in Alabama as a result of his continuing crusade for civil rights. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. 10 Things You May Not Know About Martin Luther King Jr, For Martin Luther King Jr., Nonviolent Protest Never Meant Wait and See. A court had ordered that King could not hold protests in Birmingham. Many of us are shaped by our race, faith, ideological, geographic, cultural, or other marinades. By April 12, King was in prison along with many of his fellow activists. In his Letter from the Birmingham Jail, King wrote: "But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a . All Rights Reserved. The letter has been described as "one of the most important historical documents penned by a modern political prisoner",[1] and is considered a classic document of civil disobedience.[2][3][4][5]. On April 3, 1975, as the communist Khmer Rouge forces closed in for the final assault on the capital city, U.S. forces were put on alert for the read more, On April 12, 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passes awaypartway through his fourth term in office, leaving Vice President Harry S. Truman in charge of a country still fighting the Second World War and in possession of a weapon of unprecedented and terrifying power. Courtesy of Birmingham Public Library Archives, Long Forgotten, 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing Survivor Speaks Out, 'Birmingham': A Family Tale In The Civil Rights Era. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. The image burnished into national memory is the Dr. King of I Have a Dream, delivered more than 50 years ago in Washington, D.C. In January, Gov. King confirmed that he and his fellow demonstrators were indeed using nonviolent direct action in order to create "constructive" tension. From the Birmingham jail where he was imprisoned for his participation in demonstrations, King wrote a letter in reply. Martin Luther King Jr., right are taken by a policeman as they led a line of demonstrators into the business section of Birmingham, Ala., on April 12, 1963. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Martin Luther King Jr., with the Rev. These pages of poetry and justice now stand as one of the supreme 20th-century instruction manuals of self-help on how Davids can stand up to Goliaths without spilling blood. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. This article was written by Douglas Brinkley and originally published in August 2003 issue of American History Magazine. The man who had won the election, Albert Boutwell, was also a segregationist, and he was one of many who accused outsidershe clearly meant Kingof stirring up trouble in Birmingham. "I was 18. Q: 1. The resulting letter was addressed to Fellow Clergymen who had criticized the protest campaign. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds. [1] The authors of "A Call for Unity" had written "An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense" in January 1963. Why did Dr King write the letter from Birmingham? The correct answer is D. Martin Luther King's goal in writing "Letter from Birmingham Jail" was to "defend his techniques against ecclesiastical criticism." Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the letter to a group of white clergy who were criticizing MLK Jr.'s activities in Birmingham, Alabama. And so, with America again seemingly just as divided as it was in the 60s, here are five things that we should all take away from King's letter that I hope will bring us closer. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. They were widely hailed for being among the most progressive religious leaders in the South, Bass said. He makes a clear distinction between both of them. As an African American, he spoke of the country's oppression of Black people, including himself. I'll never forget the time or the date. A recent bipartisan infrastructure bill is a start, but other climate-related legislation is languishing in partisan bickering. The nonviolent campaign was coordinated by the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Dr. King believed that the clergymen had made a mistake in criticizing the protestors without equally examining the racist causes of the injustice that the protest was against. Answered over 90d ago. Thanks to Dr. Kings letter, Birmingham had become a clarion call for action by the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, especially in the 1980s, when the international outcry to free Nelson Mandela reached its zenith. Something tells me Dr. King would have been on the frontlines for this crisis too. [19], Against the clergymen's assertion that demonstrations could be illegal, King argued that civil disobedience was not only justified in the face of unjust laws but also was necessary and even patriotic: "The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. It's etched in my mind forever," says Charles Avery Jr. It documents how frustrated he was by white moderates who kept telling blacks that this was not the right time: "And that's all we've heard: 'Wait, wait for a more convenient season.' King referred to his responsibility as the leader of the SCLC, which had numerous affiliated organizations throughout the South. On August 28, 1963, an interracial assembly of more than 200,000 gathered peaceably in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. King expresses his belief that his actions during the Human Right Movement were not "untimely," and that he is not an "outsider.". But four days earlier, on April 12, 1963,. Dr. Kings remedy: nonviolent direct action, the only spiritually valid way to bring gross injustice to the surface, where it could be seen and dealt with. U.S. "They were all moderates or liberals. The United Auto Workers paid Kings $160,000 bail, and he was released from jail on April 20. Incarcerated, he wrote a letter in response to the Clergymen's letter in which he wrote his thoughts and justified what many saw as an act that was "unwise and untimely" (King 2). George Wallace delivered his inaugural address with these fighting words: "I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.". In his famous 'Letter from Birmingham Jail,' Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. answered nine criticisms published against him and his supporters. Segregation undermines human personality, ergo, is unjust. Dr. Avery recalls hearing King, who was passionate. After three days of fierce combat and over 10,000 casualties suffered, the Canadian Corps seizes the previously German-held Vimy Ridge in northern France on April 12, 1917. Martin Luther King Jr. began writing his Letter From Birmingham Jail, directed at eight Alabama clergy who were considered moderate religious leaders. Argentinian human rights activist Adolfo Prez Esquivel, the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize winner, was inspired in part by Kings letter to create Servicio Paz y Justicia, a Latin American organization that documented the tragedy of the desaparecidos. The term "outsider" was a thinly-veiled reference to Martin Luther King Jr., who replied four days later, with his famous " Letter from Birmingham Jail ." He argued that direct action was necessary to protest unjust laws. They were all moderates or liberals. Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. v. CBS, Inc. Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), African American founding fathers of the United States, Statue of Martin Luther King Jr. (Pueblo, Colorado), Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, San Francisco. Fifty years have passed since Dr Martin Luther King, Jr wrote his "Letter from the Birmingham Jail". At least thats what TIME thought: in the April 19 issue of that year, under the headline Poorly Timed Protest, the magazine cast King as an outsider who did not consult the citys local activists and leaders before making demands that set back Birminghams progress and drew Bull Connors ire. "[12] Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, arranged $160,000 to bail out King and the other jailed protestors.[13]. Furthermore, he wrote: "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."[20]. That eventful year was climaxed by the award to King of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in December. King was jailed along with large numbers of his supporters, including hundreds of schoolchildren. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to American History magazine today! Magazines, Digital They protest because it causes tension, and tension causes change. It's been five decades since Martin Luther King Jr., began writing his famous "Letter From Birmingham Jail," a response to eight white Alabama clergymen who criticized King and worried the civil rights campaign would cause violence. Written as a response to a letter published by eight white clergymen who denounced King's work as "unwise and untimely," King delivered, under trying circumstances, a work of exceptional lucidity and moral force (King). He wrote this letter from his jail cell after him and several of his associates were arrested as they nonviolently protested segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.

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