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April 16, 1963 - Letter from Birmingham Jail

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April 16, 1963 - Letter from Birmingham Jail

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Martin Luther King Jr was a well spoken and influential speaker that advocated for the rights and freedom of blacks in America. One of his most influential writings was from a solitary cell in Birmingham, Alabama. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" was supposedly a response to 8 religious leaders that wrote to him in a newspaper, however it handled a much larger audience, being published in The Atlantic Monthly, and The Christian Century.
Even though King had many supporters willing to bail him out of jail, he decided to stay longer, to help emphasize the point of non-violent protest and acts of discrimination and racism towards blacks.

https://www.history.com/news/kings-letter-from-birmingham-jail-50-years-later

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On April 12, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and nearly 50 other protestors and civil rights leaders were arrested after leading a Good Friday demonstration as part of the Birmingham Campaign, designed to bring national attention to the brutal, racist treatment suffered by blacks in one of the most segregated cities in America-Birmingham, Alabama. For months, an organized boycott of the city's white-owned businesses had failed to achieve any substantive results, leaving King and others convinced they had no other options but more direct actions, ignoring a recently passed ordinance that prohibited public gathering without an official permit.

For King, this arrest-his 13th-would become one of the most important of his career. Thrown into solitary confinement, King was initially denied access to his lawyers or allowed to contact his wife, until President John F. Kennedy was urged to intervene on his behalf. As previously agreed upon, King was not immediately bailed out of jail by his supporters, having instead agreed to a longer stay in jail to draw additional attention to the plight of black Americans.

Shortly after King's arrest, a friend smuggled in a copy of an April 12 Birmingham newspaper which included an open letter, written by eight local Christian and Jewish religious leaders, which criticized both the demonstrations and King himself, whom they considered an outside agitator. Isolated in his cell, King began working on a response. Without notes or research materials, King drafted an impassioned defense of his use of nonviolent, but direct, actions.
READ MORE: 10 Things You May Not Know About Martin Luther King Jr.
Over the course of the letter's 7,000 words, he turned the criticism back upon both the nation's religious leaders and more moderate-minded white Americans, castigating them for sitting passively on the sidelines while King and others risked everything agitating for change. King drew inspiration for his words from a long line of religious and political philosophers, quoting everyone from St. Augustine and Socrates to Thomas Jefferson and then-Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren, who had overseen the Supreme Court's landmark civil rights ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

For those, including the Birmingham religious leaders, who urged caution and remained convinced that time would solve the country's racial issues, King reminded them of Warren's own words on the need for desegregation, "justice too long delayed is justice denied." And for those who thought the Atlanta-based King had no right to interfere with issues in Alabama, King argued, in one of his most famous phrases, that he could not sit "idly by in Atlanta" because "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Without writing papers, King initially began by jotting down notes in the margin of the newspaper itself, before writing out portions of the work on scraps of paper he gave his attorneys-allowing a King ally, Wyatt Walker, to begin compiling the letter, which eventually ran to 21 double-spaced, typed pages. Curiously, King never sent a copy to any of the eight Birmingham clergy to whom he had "responded," leaving many to believe that he had intended it to have a much broader, national, audience all along.

King was finally released from jail on April 20, four days after penning the letter. Despite the harsh treatment he and his fellow protestors had received, King continued his work in Birmingham. Just two weeks later, more than 1,000 schoolchildren took part in the famed "Children's Crusade," skipping school to march through the city streets advocating for integration and racial equality. Birmingham's Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor, who King had repeatedly criticized in his letter for his harsh treatment, ordered fire hoses and police dogs to be turned on the young protestors; more than 600 of them were jailed on the first day alone. The brutal and cruel police tactics on display in Alabama were broadcast on televisions around the world, horrifying many Americans.
READ MORE: 8 Works of Literature Written from Prison
With Birmingham in chaos and businesses shuttered, local officials were forced to meet with King and agree to some, but not all, of his demands. On June 11, with the horrific events in Birmingham still seared on the American consciousness, and following Governor George Wallace's refusal to integrate the University of Alabama until the arrival of the U.S. National Guard, President Kennedy addressed the nation, announcing his plans to present sweeping civil rights legislation to the U.S. Congress. Kennedy's announcement, however, did little to quell the unrest in Birmingham and on September 15, 1963, a Ku Klux Klan bombing at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church left four young African American girls dead.

By this time, King's Letter from Birmingham Jail had begun to appear in publications across the country. Months earlier, Harvey Shapiro, an editor at The New York Times, had urged King to use his frequent jailing as an opportunity to write a longer defense of his use of nonviolent tactics, and though King did so, The New York Times chose not to publish it. Others did, including The Atlantic Monthly and The Christian Century, one of the most prominent Protestant magazines in the nation. In the weeks leading up to the March on Washington, King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference used the letter as part of its fundraising efforts, and King himself used it as a basis for a book, Why We Can't Wait, which looked back upon the successes and failures of the Birmingham Campaign. The book was released in July 1964, the same month President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act into law.

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Behind Martin Luther King's Searing 'Letter from Birmingham Jail' | HISTORY

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King penned of the seminal texts of the civil rights movement while in solitary confinement, initially on the margins of a newspaper.

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On May 2 of the year 1963, over 1000 students in Birmingham, Alabama skipped school and met at 6th St. Baptist Church to protest for their rights in a peaceful march. Many, almost hundreds were arrested violently by police that day.
However, when the students started their march the next day, police and firefighters brutally greeted them, with clubs, police dogs, and high pressure fire hoses. This important event in 1963 helped the world see the atrocities committed towards people of color, and change was soon seen.

https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog/childrens-crusade

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May 28, 1963 - A Sit-In in Jackson, Mississippi Turns Violent

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May 28, 1963 - A Sit-In in Jackson, Mississippi Turns Violent

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On May 28, 1963, students from Tougaloo College performed a sit-in at a lunch counter in Mississippi. One of the most brutal retaliations from whites happened that day, with various things being thrown at the students. Broken glass, beatings with fists and brass knuckles, and hot cigarettes being pressed against them.

https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/jackson-woolworth-sit-in/

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June 12, 1963 - Medger Evers is Assassinated

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June 12, 1963 - Medger Evers is Assassinated

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A famous civil rights activist in the South that advocated educational rights and more, Medger Evers supported Martin Luther King Jr's fight. He was shot and killed by a white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith.

https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/civil-rights-leaders/medgar-evers

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August 28, 1963 - March for Freedom, "I Have a Dream" Speech

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August 28, 1963 - March for Freedom, "I Have a Dream" Speech

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"I Have a Dream..." Martin Luther King's most famous speech was delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and is still known today as a masterpiece of American literature. In this speech, King talks about his hopes for the American future, and inspires thousands on thousands.

https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/1963-march-washington

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September 15, 1963 - Bomb in Birmingham, Alabama, 16th St. Baptist Church

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September 15, 1963 - Bomb in Birmingham, Alabama, 16th St. Baptist Church

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At the time, Baptist Street church was a common place for the activist's meetings to occur, and the bombing there was no accident. Lined with malice, this act of racial hatred killed 4 little black girls.
Justice was finally served in 1977 with the arrest of the KKK members responsible.

https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/baptist-street-church-bombing

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The crater and other damage caused by the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which killed four African-American girls. AP Photo.

It was a quiet Sunday morning in Birmingham, Alabama-around 10:24 on September 15, 1963-when a dynamite bomb exploded in the back stairwell of the downtown Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

The violent blast ripped through the wall, killing four African-American girls on the other side and injuring more than 20 inside the church.

It was a clear act of racial hatred: the church was a key civil rights meeting place and had been a frequent target of bomb threats.

Our Birmingham office launched an immediate investigation and wired the FBI Director about the crime. FBI bomb experts raced to the scene-via military jet-and an additional dozen personnel from other offices were sent to assist Birmingham.

At 10:00 p.m. that night, Assistant Director Al Rosen assured Assistant Attorney General Katzenbach that "the Bureau considered this a most heinous offense...[and]...we had entered the investigation with no holds barred."

And we backed that promise up. Dozens of FBI agents worked the case throughout September and October and into the new year-as many as 36 at one point. One internal memo noted that:

"...we have practically torn Birmingham apart and have interviewed thousands of persons. We have seriously disrupted Klan activities by our pressure and interviews so that these organizations have lost members and support. ...We have made extensive use of the polygraph, surveillances, microphone surveillances and technical surveillances..."

By 1965, we had serious suspects-namely, Robert E. Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, Herman Frank Cash, and Thomas E. Blanton, Jr., all KKK members-but witnesses were reluctant to talk and physical evidence was lacking. Also, at that time, information from our surveillances was not admissible in court. As a result, no federal charges were filed in the '60s.

It has been claimed that Director Hoover held back evidence from prosecutors in the '60s or even tried to block prosecution. But it's simply not true. His concern was to prevent leaks, not to stifle justice. In one memo concerning a Justice Department prosecutor seeking information, he wrote, "Haven't these reports already been furnished to the Dept.?" In 1966, Hoover overruled his staff and made transcripts of wiretaps available to Justice. And he couldn't have blocked the prosecution and didn't-he simply didn't think the evidence was there to convict.

In the end, justice was served.

Chambliss received life in prison in 1977 following a case led by Alabama Attorney General Robert Baxley. And eventually the fear, prejudice, and reticence that kept witnesses from coming forward began to subside. We re-opened our case in the mid-1990s, and Blanton and Cherry were indicted in May 2000. Both were convicted at trial and sentenced to life in prison. The fourth man, Herman Frank Cash, had died in 1994.

If you are interested in learning more, please read our 3,400 pages on this case-what was called the "BAPBOMB" investigation- posted online. Also see more pictures on our Multimedia website.

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Baptist Street Church Bombing | Federal Bureau of Investigation

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The crater and other damage caused by the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which killed four African-American girls. AP Photo. It was a quiet Sunday morning in Birmingham, Alabama-around 10:24 on September 15, 1963-when a dynamite bomb exploded in the back stairwell of the downtown Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.