“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.

---

Example Sentences

“The Declaration’s Journey” opens with a dramatic juxtaposition: A Windsor chair owned by Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence, faces the small, rusting steel bench on which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. composed his 1963 “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”

From The Wall Street Journal

When James Comey became head of the F.B.I. in 2013, he sent reading recommendations to his staff, including “Letter From Birmingham Jail” by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Lean In” by Sheryl Sandberg and “The Righteous Mind” by a professor at New York University’s business school, Jonathan Haidt.

From New York Times

He also voiced disdain for white moderates more “devoted to ‘order’ than to justice,” as he observed in his famous letter from Birmingham jail, and his anti-war stance in “Beyond Vietnam.”

From Salon

“There are places across the country where the “ Letter from Birmingham Jail ” is banned.

From Seattle Times

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