

I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states.

“I am in Birmingham because injustice is here” he said. King’s response to the wrong-time, wrong-place accusation was succinct. On this day, April 16, in 1963 Martin Luther King wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” He composed it over the course of day, writing on a legal pad provided by his lawyers, margins of a newspaper, and, after running out of both of the above, toilet paper.

King’s response was one of the most eloquent treatises on civil rights in the 20th century. A group of eight white clergymen wrote an open letter to King in Birmingham, accusing him of creating civil unrest, and calling his act of civil disobedience “unwise and untimely” - not allowing time for the political system to change. Meanwhile, the politically moderate whites he hoped to persuade to his cause questioned his tactics. The campaign he organized was in tatters, with King and other leaders arrested. Locked up in a jail in Birmingham, Alabama, after leading an illegal protest in Albany, Georgia, Martin Luther King was facing his darkest hour.
