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

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.