Supplementary Reading #1

Martin Luther King, Jr.--Excerpt "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. sits in a jail cell at the Jefferson County Courthouse in Birmingham, Alabama.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested and jailed during the April 1963 civil rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama. While he was in prison, eight white clergymen, who considered themselves liberals, wrote an open letter to the local newspaper criticizing the demonstrations. The excerpt from King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is his famous reply to those clergymen.

King employs powerful allusions, comparing himself to Biblical prophets and to the apostle Paul. To show why a demonstration was necessary, he explains the four steps of his non-violent process. He cites examples and arguments from history to moral theology to support his belief that laws that degrade people are not true laws and that anyone who accepts a penalty for violating such a "law" is "expressing the highest respect for law." According to King, the South was in dire need of some creative extremists.

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NEXT: Supplementary Reading #2