“Letter from Birmingham Jail”

Cultural  

1. (1963) A letter that Martin Luther King, Jr., addressed to his fellow clergymen while he was in jail in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, after a nonviolent protest against racial segregation (see also sit-ins). King defended the apparent impatience of people in the civil rights movement, maintaining that without forceful actions like his, equal rights for black people would never be gained. King upheld the general use of nonviolent civil disobedience against unjust laws, saying that human rights must take precedence over such laws. He claimed that “one who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly”; such a person, King said, is actually showing respect for law, by insisting that laws be just.

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Example Sentences

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, read excerpts from the Rev. Martin Luther King’ Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” from 1963.

From Washington Times • Sep. 23, 2023

That year his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” stressed the failure of even the most enlightened white ministers and rabbis to abandon tokenism on behalf of actual justice.

From Economist • Mar. 28, 2018

About a month after the Game of Change, Martin Luther King Jr. penned his famed “Letter from Birmingham Jail” defending the strategy of non-violent resistance to racism.

From Washington Times • Mar. 21, 2018