Letter from Birmingham City Jail

Letter from Birmingham City Jail

Correspondence

Organizations

Headquarters

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." ... Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. ... An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. ... All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. ... I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. ... At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. ... Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral ends of racial injustice

King, Martin Luther

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U.C. Davis L. Rev., Vol.26

1993

Hist 428 Spring 2020

pp.835-1045

English

Still Image

ISSN: 0197-4564