April 12, 1963

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., on Good Friday, violated a court injunction prohibiting public civil rights demonstrations in the city. Local police officers arrested King and a handful of protestors, including the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and transported them to the Birmingham city jail, where 40 years earlier, a prisoner had penned a mournful folk ballad about the place that included the line “write me a letter; send it by mail; send it in care of Birmingham jail.” Early during his eight-day imprisonment, King began composing a response to white ministers who questioned why King and protesters had chosen to stage their protests in Birmingham. Those pieces of paper given to his lawyers became “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the most important written document of the civil rights era.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Mugshot of Martin Luther King Jr. following his arrest in Birmingham, 1963. (Birmingham Police Department, Wikipedia)

Fred Lee Shuttlesworth (left), Ralph David Abernathy (center) and Martin Luther King Jr. (right) march on Good Friday on April 12, 1963, in Birmingham. The men were later arrested, prompting King to write his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Birmingham Public Library Archives)

Martin Luther King, 1964. (Nobel Foundation, Wikipedia)

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