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Summary
Martin Luther King, Jr. addresses this open letter of April 16, 1963, to the eight white clergymen who criticized King’s activism in Birmingham, Alabama, for which he was imprisoned. King explains that his belief in the good intentions of these clergymen encouraged him to address their chief complaints, which is that his actions were poorly timed, ill-conceived, and unwelcome intrusions from outside. King rebuts all three charges in turn. Referencing the Apostle Paul from the New Testament, King argues that his faith requires him to answer all calls for aid. Not only do all people in the United States belong anywhere within the nation’s borders, but all people, regardless of nationality, suffer from acts of injustice. Humankind is bound together, King explains, by bonds that cannot be escaped, and this means that all are affected, either directly or indirectly, by acts of injustice. He notes that the clergymen seem less concerned about what the Black community in Birmingham suffers from segregation than by the demonstrations’ effects.
King next details the principles of nonviolence that govern the campaign for justice in Birmingham. There are four steps to such campaigns: information gathering, negotiation, purifying reflection, and direct action. King’s letter quickly moves to the first of these steps, briefly outlining the violence against Black citizens in Birmingham and noting that efforts to improve conditions in other ways have been met with refusal or with bad faith promises. Frustrated and disappointed, the city’s Black community began the introspective preparation necessary to a nonviolent campaign. People considered if they could endure various ordeals, including beatings and incarceration, without responding physically. Dates were chosen for the demonstrations, although organizers delayed for the mayoral election. King notes that Eugene “Bull” Connor, a staunch segregationist and the Commissioner of Public Safety, was one candidate.
The aim of nonviolent direct action is to create a tense situation, or crisis, which will make negotiation, previously judged impossible, possible, King explains. Nonviolent direct action shifts tension from the people suffering to those hurting them. King links its efficacy to the philosophy of Socrates, a thinker from Ancient Greece, noting that then as now certain kinds of tension can lead to freedom. He also insists that power is never relinquished by the privileged without pressure of some kind. Nor do the privileged welcome movements for freedom, always counseling delay and patience instead. King provides a list of examples to demonstrate why it is no longer possible for Black Americans to wait for their rights. The examples he includes all contribute to one of the profound psychological effects of segregation—the feeling of fundamental erasure that King terms “nobodiness.”
Taking up the charge that the protesters knowingly break the law, King asks his readers to differentiate between just and unjust laws. An unjust law might seem like an oxymoron, but King argues that laws can only be deemed just if they are moral as well as legal. Drawing on a range of influential thinkers, King asserts that laws for segregation are fundamentally unjust, as are those which prevent Black Americans from voting or from exercising their First Amendment rights to assembly. It is false to claim that the protesters break the law, he continues, because they only reject those which are unjust, in the hopes of replacing them with just alternatives. Rather than disrespect, this shows the highest possible respect for the law. Pointing to historical examples, from the Bible to the twentieth century, King asserts that the struggle in Birmingham is part of a long tradition.
Analysis
“Letter from Birmingham Jail” is written in response to the public criticism of King’s actions by eight white clergymen, unnamed in the text. The letter’s first half responds to the specific complaints these critics lodge. Although this letter is thus an example of occasional prose, a type of writing that responds to a specific historical event or antecedent, it is also crafted as a contribution to the larger tradition of writing about justice and equality. King is not the first author to pen an important statement about justice from a cell: he follows Socrates (in Plato’s Apology) and Henry David Thoreau (“On Civil Disobedience”), among others, in protesting injustice while imprisoned. The juxtaposition of his thinking about freedom while confined adds power to his thoughts, as does his ability to move quickly between specific attacks on the early stages of the Birmingham campaign and the larger philosophical tradition that helps to explain its importance.
A key contribution of this letter is its detailed presentation of the four stages of nonviolent direct action. King introduces the steps such protests must follow—collecting facts to evaluate injustice, negotiation with oppressors, self-purification by activists, and direct action—detailing both the benefits and the challenges it presents. At the same time, though, the letter couples its theoretical explanation with evidence from Birmingham, showing how the community there prepared carefully for the action underway. Participants must be willing to endure violence patiently, resisting the urge to retaliate or even to strike out in self-defense. They must also be prepared to go to jail, thus accepting the punishment associated with breaking the law. Most importantly, they must be able to differentiate between a just and an unjust law. Making this distinction does not absolve them from the punishment, however. King is clear that there is strength in tolerating an unjust sentence and argues that the willingness to suffer this wrong is a key step toward the eventual triumph of right. Because nonviolent direct action has worked in other parts of the South, as well as in other parts of the world, King is convinced it will prevail in Birmingham.
When it turns to the distinction between just and unjust laws, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” becomes more philosophical in its tone and argument. King’s use of concrete examples—brief vignettes of the experiences of Black Americans under the conditions of segregation—prepares readers to understand the more abstract ideas to follow. These examples help readers to feel, as well as understand, injustice. King’s argument that “unjust laws” are not laws depends on two ideas of justice. One is related to the legal system in which laws organize society; they let people know what they can and cannot do, what is legal or illegal. The other idea of justice is associated with morality; moral laws or precepts differentiate good from bad, right from wrong. The two ideas can overlap, or they can diverge. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” focuses on the latter case, when what is legal is not good or right.
King is not the first person to make this argument and he presents it powerfully in his letter. He references St. Augustine, an influential Christian philosopher, but this argument is also important across American history. In the years before the Civil War, abolitionists like Frederick Douglass argued that there was a “higher law,” the law of the conscience, which authorized people to break unjust laws, specifically those which enslaved people. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” participates in this important intellectual tradition, one that insists that American laws should aim to be just and fair, in a legal sense, as well as just and equitable, in a moral one.
