Essay

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Martin Luther King

Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963) [Abridged]

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 answer criticism of my work

and ideas … But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely

set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable

terms.

I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the

argument of “outsiders coming in.” I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern

Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every Southern state with

headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some 85 affiliate organizations all across the South …

Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a

nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented…

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth

century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of

their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of

Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I. compelled to carry the gospel of

freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call

for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in

Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. 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. Never again can we afford to live with

the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never

be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds…

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: 1) collection of the facts to determine

whether injustices are alive; 2) negotiation; 3) self-purification; and 4) direct action. We have gone

through all of these steps in Birmingham … Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly

segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of

the country. Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality. There have been

more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any city in this

nation. These are the hard, brutal, and unbelievable facts. On the basis of these conditions Negro

leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to

engage in good faith negotiation.

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Then came the opportunity last September to talk with some of the leaders of the economic

community. In these negotiating sessions certain promises were made by the merchants—such as

the promise to remove the humiliating racial signs from the stores. On the basis of these promises

Reverend Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights

agreed to call a moratorium on any type of demonstrations. As the weeks and months unfolded we

realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. The signs remained. As in so many

experiences in the past, we were confronted with blasted hopes, and the dark shadow of a deep

disappointment settled upon us. So we had no alternative except that of preparing for direct action,

whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of

the local and national community. We were not unmindful of the difficulties involved. So we

decided to go through the process of self-purification. We started having workshops on nonviolence

and repeatedly asked ourselves the questions, “are you able to accept the blows without

retaliating?” “Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?” …

You may well ask, “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, etc.? Isn’t negotiation a better path?”

You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action.

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a

community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. … Just as

Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from

the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective

appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society

that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of

understanding and brotherhood. …

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without legal and

nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom

give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and give up their unjust

posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it

must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement

that was “well timed,” according to the timetable 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 a piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” It has been a

tranquilizing Thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-

formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that

“justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than 340 years for our

constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed

toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the

gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.

Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say wait. But

when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and

brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your

black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your 20 million

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Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when

you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your

six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised

on television, and see the tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed

to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental

sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness

toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking in

agonizing pathos: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?” when you take a

cross country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of

your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by

nagging signs reading “white” men and “colored” when your first name becomes “nigger” and your

middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when

your wife and mother are never given the respected title of “Mrs.” when you are harried by day and

haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance, never quite

knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are

forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”—then you will understand why we find it

difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer

willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding

despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate

concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing

segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to

break laws. One may won ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?”

The answer lies in the fact that there fire two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the Brat to

advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws.

Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine

that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or

unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust

law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas

Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law

that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All

segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distort the soul and damages the personality. It

gives the segreg ator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.

Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I-it”

relationship for an “I-thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things.

Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally

wrong and awful…

I hope you are able to ace the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading

or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks

an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that

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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.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in

the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground

that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were

willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to

certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because

Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a

massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the

Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in

Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in German at the time, I would have aided and

comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles

dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s

antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess

that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have

almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride

toward freedom is not the White citizens’ “Councilor” or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white

moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the

absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree

with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direst action” who

paternistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth

of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow

understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from

people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. …

You spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow

clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I started thinking about the

fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of

complacency made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so

completely drained of self-respect and a sense of “somebodiness” that they have adjusted to

segregation, and a few Negroes in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and

economic security, and at points they profit from segregation, have unconsciously become

insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred and comes

perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that

are springing up over the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim

movement. This movement is nourished by the contemporary frustration over the continued

existence of racial discrimination. It is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have

absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man in an incurable

“devil.” …

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The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations. He has to get them out. So let him

march sometime; let him have his prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; understand why he must have

sit-ins and freedom rides. If his repressed emotions do not come out in these nonviolent ways, they

will come out in ominous expressions of violence. This is not a threat; it is a fact of history. So I have

not said to my people, “Get rid of your discontent.” But I have tried to say that this normal and

healthy discontent can be channeled through the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. …

In spite of my shattered dreams of the past, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white

religious leadership in the community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral

concern, serve as the channel through which our just grievances could get to the power structure. I

had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshippers to comply with a

desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare:

“Follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is your brother.” In the midst

of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the

sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a

mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers

say, “Those are social issues with which the Gospel has no real concern,” and I have watched so

many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which made a strange

distinction between body and soul, the sacred and the secular. …

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it

possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader, but as a fellow

clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon

pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities

and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our

great nation with all of their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,

M. L. King, Jr.

Source: TeachingAmericanHistory.org a project of the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-from-birmingham-city-jail/