The 21-page, typed, double-spaced essay appears as though it is a personal correspondence, addressed to the eight white ministers. He gave bits and pieces of the letter to his lawyers to take back to movement headquarters, where the Reverend Wyatt Walker began compiling and editing the literary jigsaw puzzle. King and a small group of protestors were arrested and transported to the Birmingham jail where 40 years earlier, a prisoner had penned a mournful folk ballad about the place that included the line "write me a letter save it for mail send it in care of Birmingham jail."Įarly in his eight-day imprisonment, King read a white clergymen’s statement criticizing the timing of the protests and began composing a response. On April 12, 1963, King defied a court injunction and marched through the streets of Birmingham. King’s letter, which powerfully stated a case for racial equality and the immediate need for social justice, still has an impact on history. Day, Samford University’s Davis Library has displayed one of the most influential pieces of text from the civil rights movement, an original copy of King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” dated April 16, 1963.
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