May 19, 1963

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the most important written document of the civil rights era, appeared in the national press. Arrested on April 12 for violating a court injunction, King wrote the letter in response to a statement by eight white ministers who questioned his use of direct nonviolent resistance as a means of pursuing social justice. In the 21-page letter, King justified his use of civil disobedience and direct action in Birmingham and admonished white moderates for not risking their own reputation to better support the movement. The press published the letter widely and it now appears in hundreds of anthologies throughout the world.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham. (The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Re-creation of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s cell in the Birmingham Jail, National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis. (Adam Jones, Ph.D., Wikimedia)

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.” – In Martin Luther King, Jr’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 2014. (Jason Tillmann, Wikimedia)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.