Letter from Birmingham Jail
The open letter that Martin Luther King Jr wrote in the Birmingham city jail, dated 16 April 1963, in reply to eight Alabama clergymen who had called the demonstrations he was leading unwise and untimely.
King was held in the Birmingham jail after the march of Good Friday, 12 April 1963. The letter is addressed “My dear fellow clergymen” and answers, point by point, the statement of eight white religious leaders of Alabama (see Statement by Alabama Clergymen). It is dated 16 April 1963. According to the King Institute, the letter first circulated in Birmingham in mimeographed copies and King revised it for his book Why We Can’t Wait (1964), so printed versions differ in wording. The text linked here is the one distributed by the King Papers Project’s Liberation Curriculum, which gives Why We Can’t Wait as its source.
It is a primary source for King’s own account of why the campaign came to Birmingham, for his argument about just and unjust laws, and for his judgment on the white churches of the South. It is one side of an exchange, and should be read with the statement it answers. See the Churches and the Civil Rights Movement.
Cited in
- 16 April 1963, firm date