yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Letter from a Birmingham Jail | US government and civics | Khan Academy


3m read
·Nov 11, 2024

What we're going to read together in this video is what has become known as Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," which he wrote from a jail cell in 1963 after he and several of his associates were arrested in Birmingham, Alabama, as they non-violently protested segregation there.

And I'm going to read an excerpt of it. I encourage you to read it in its entirety; it is one of the most powerful documents, frankly, I have ever read. Martin Luther King often gets a lot of credit as an amazing speaker. People say, "Hey, he could read the phone book and it would move people." But this also speaks to what an incredible writer he was. Not only is it moving, but it really gives the philosophical underpinnings of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and many people attribute the Civil Rights Act of 1964, passed by Congress, as being heavily influenced by Martin Luther King's letter.

Now, what motivated Martin Luther King to write this letter was a statement made in the newspaper by eight Alabama clergymen, which encouraged the protesters to wait, saying that yes, we are sympathetic to the injustices, but they should be resolved in the courts and not through the type of protest, the type of tension that Martin Luther King and his fellow protesters were creating.

And so here's just an excerpt of what Martin Luther King wrote:

"You may well ask, why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path? You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such attention that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored."

"My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the non-violent resistor may sound rather shocking, but I must confess that I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive non-violent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for non-violent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood."

"The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say 'wait.' But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading 'white' and 'colored'—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait."

I've read this many times, but every time I read it—and this is just an excerpt, as you can tell—it's incredibly powerful. I encourage you to read it in its entirety and think about why this was such a powerful document, especially for catalyzing things like the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

More Articles

View All
15 Ways To Achieve Peak Performance
When it comes to achieving peak performance in any field and surpassing your competition, there’s no such thing as luck. Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. So how do you prepare accordingly, and what strategies do successful people e…
Opium Wars | World History | Khan Academy
This is a map of East Asia in the 19th century, and you can already see significant imperial control by Western European powers. You have the British East India Company in India. You have the French initially getting a foothold in Southeast Vietnam in thi…
Selfie Waves
[Music] Hey, Vsauce. Michael here. On July 1st of 2015, a long-standing ban was lifted. Visitors were finally allowed to take selfies at the White House. This is the first legal selfie ever taken on a White House tour. But a year before the ban was lifte…
The 'Value Investing' Strategy Explained - The Young Investors Podcast | Episode 1
Hey guys and welcome to our investing podcast! We’re doing a podcast, can you believe it? My name is Brandon, and I’m joined, gonna be joined each and every week by Hamish Hotter. Hello, how’s it going? Oh, I’m going quite well. How are you doing? Yeah…
Top Ways Startups Waste Money
I’ll say this: if you want to get really good at firing vendors, hiring a PR agency is a great way to get your feet wet, right? Because I don’t know anyone that’s ever hired a PR agency that hasn’t fired PR agencies. [Music] Hello, this is Michael with H…
Tales of a Tailfeather | Explorers in the Field
(Birds chirping) (Soft music) - My relationship to the natural world was largely fostered through my grandparents who owned a farm in Idaho. We would go there every summer and we were free to roam and play in the forest and hang out. But I still didn’t ne…