Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here”

Today is Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Day, and like we do every year in hon­or of Dr. King’s mem­o­ry, I’m post­ing an excerpt from his Let­ter From Birm­ing­ham Jail.

This year’s selec­tion is a set of pas­sages from the open­ing para­graphs of the let­ter. Here, Dr. King is explain­ing how he end­ed up in Birm­ing­ham, Alaba­ma, and address­ing the crit­i­cism that he is an “out­sider.” This sec­tion has two very mem­o­rable lines that read­ers may rec­og­nize: “I am in Birm­ing­ham because injus­tice is here” and “Like Paul, I must con­stant­ly respond to the Mace­don­ian call for aid.” Read on to appre­ci­ate the con­text for those lines.

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 have the hon­or of serv­ing as pres­i­dent of the South­ern Chris­t­ian Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence, an orga­ni­za­tion oper­at­ing in every south­ern state, with head­quar­ters in Atlanta, Georgia.

We have some eighty five affil­i­at­ed orga­ni­za­tions across the South, and one of them is the Alaba­ma Chris­t­ian Move­ment for Human Rights. Fre­quent­ly we share staff, edu­ca­tion­al and finan­cial resources with our affil­i­ates. 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. We read­i­ly con­sent­ed, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with sev­er­al mem­bers of my staff, am here because 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.

The Let­ter from Birm­ing­ham Jail, also known by its alter­nate titles (“Let­ter from Birm­ing­ham City Jail” and “The Negro Is Your Broth­er”) was writ­ten April 16th, 1963, while Dr. King was incar­cer­at­ed in Alaba­ma’s third largest city.

King and oth­er civ­il rights lead­ers had been arrest­ed on April 12th for dis­re­gard­ing an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al pro­hi­bi­tion issued by an Alaba­ma cir­cuit judge on “parad­ing, demon­strat­ing, boy­cotting, tres­pass­ing and picketing.”

The let­ter was a response to an open let­ter authored by eight white cler­gy­man titled “A Call for Uni­ty,” which crit­i­cized King and his methods.

“The let­ter pro­voked King, and he began to write a response to the news­pa­per itself,” the doc­u­men­t’s Wikipedia entry explains. “King writes in Why We Can’t Wait: ‘Begun on the mar­gins of the news­pa­per in which the state­ment appeared while I was in jail, the let­ter was con­tin­ued on scraps of writ­ing paper sup­plied by a friend­ly Black trusty, and con­clud­ed on a pad my attor­neys were even­tu­al­ly per­mit­ted to leave me.’ Wal­ter Reuther, pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed Auto Work­ers, arranged $160,000 to bail out King and the oth­er jailed protestors.”

We encour­age you today to take some time to read the whole let­ter.

Or, if you’d like, you can watch/listen to a read­ing of it.

Hap­py MLK Day!