Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King as he was working on that letter, it’s an honor for us to have them here at Samford. Jennifer Taylor, assistant librarian and Special Collection chair said, “It’s a very great honor to have these early pieces from Dr. Donated to the university by George Bagley, the executive secretary of the Alabama Baptist Convention at the time of its publishing, the copy is used frequently by Samford students, and those outside of the university. It now appears in hundreds of anthologies and is studied in secondary schools and colleges all over the world.Īs one of the original typed carbon copies, this significant artifact is one of the prized possessions of the library’s Special Collection.

In the aftermath of the Birmingham campaign, the 'Letter' became part of American folklore. It opens with a salutation reading 'My dear fellow clergymen' and concludes with 'Yours for the cause of peace and brotherhood.' The document, however, was never sent to the eight ministers and instead was used by the movement for public relations purposes as a response to broader criticisms from around the country. 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.

Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr.