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Excerpts from “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
16 April 1963
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present
activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to
answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such
correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that
you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your
statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which
argues against “outsiders coming in”… I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.
But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century
B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns,
and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of
the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like
Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
…
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. Nonviolent direct
action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension 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 nonviolent resister 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, nonviolent 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 nonviolent 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 therefore concur with you in your
call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in
monologue rather than dialogue.
…
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and
Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and
buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps 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 and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty 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
can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her
eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority
beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an
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unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is
asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county 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”;
when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last
name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are
harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never
quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are
forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the
abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a
great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so
diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public
schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask:
“How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two
types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a
moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I
would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just
law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of
harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is
not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades
human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and
damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of
inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I it”
relationship for an “I thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence
segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful.
Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic
separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954
decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances,
for they are morally wrong.
…
I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying
the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do
so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law
that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the
conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
…
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian
freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.
Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish
brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are
suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.
