Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)

https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

by hn_acker • 6 months ago

481 162 6 months ago

africa.upenn.edu

andsoitis5• 6 months ago

This speech is a masterclass in effecting change through influence rather than authority.

mothballed6• 6 months ago

Groups like Black Panthers and associates of Malcom X were arming up and rearing up to back up their wishes with violence. King certainly gets the credit for oratory influence, but I think a lot of the obsession on overrepresenting it is white washed non-violence 'protest and vote harder' nonsense that the history books like to push hardest when giving role models to the youth in schools. So people like King became elevated but omit the part that there was a very real looming rod waiting and the carrot King offered was only half of the equation.

andsoitis5• 6 months ago

interesting to ponder is whether violence alone would have had a similar positive outcome?

I think I can hold in my head two things: prefer changing minds; realize that major changes are often made real by violence.

However, I would hesitate to encourage violence. I hope you also.

JumpCrisscross7• 6 months ago

it is white washed non-violence 'protest and vote harder' nonsense that the history books like to push

My family is largely [EDIT: South Asian] Indian. It’s really not nonsense.

there was a very real looming rod waiting

The rod was thinly-veiled racial violence and domestic terrorism. It would have been a route towards exterminationist rhetoric and potentially action on both sides. Not civil rights.

Keep in mind, while King was in jail America was in its own telling losing the Cold War. We were behind in space. We drew a stalemate in Korea and were getting routed in Vietnam. A year earlier the Cuban missile crisis had been narrowly averted through diplomacy. King vs. Malcolm is a textbook illustration of the downsides of escalating to violence as a political tool. (And the upsides of refraining from it even if your adversary embraces it.)

malcolmgreaves• 6 months ago

Thanks for getting out the word on an incredibly historically accurate take on the Civil Rights movement. I think people often forget that _this_ is an incredible part of the movement. We got large-scale non-violent demonstrations and civil disobedience instead of a proliferation of armed protest and possibly something even worse. Many folks were tired of waiting around to be safe and treated justly. Just one too many a cop beating up your father or murdering your brother or lying under oath to send your neighbor away for years. The Black Panthers started armed patrols of their own neighborhoods to protect themselves from racist Oakland police officers. There were growing calls for other Black neighborhoods to use their 2nd amendment rights to arm and defend themselves from a tyrannical government. They were succeeding and spreading. As a direct response, Regan (while governor of CA) eventually signed the Mulford Act of '67 which made carrying firearms in public without a permit illegal. (_And they were stingy when it came to giving these permits to Black folks._)

Rperry2174• 6 months ago

I think the underappreciated part isn't "violence vs non-violence", but the role that malcolm x and black pathners actually played.

They weren't primarily organizing armed revolt.. it was more about the idea that they were articulating moral clarity. They were, in the most credible way, refusing to accept endless delay.

This allowed them to shift the baseline of what was politically tolerable.

In that sense, the movements worked collectively because of a kind of good-cop/bad-cop dynamic. MLK JR offered a path to reform that felt (to some) constructive and legitimate _because_ there was a visible alternative that many people udnerstood as worse.

I think violence is already far to prominent today, but I think successful movements do need both moral persuasion (if morality is still a thing that persuades) and _also_ a credible way of making inaction feel unsafe.

cassepipe2• 6 months ago

You argument is intuitive but it is also very wrong.

In the face of violence, human groups tend to become tighter and more authoritarian with less room for dissenting voices. If you believe that the State was really afraid of revolutionary violence you are terribly misguided, repressing violence with violence is one of the State most ancient task, what all States are most prepared for and good at. Only in rare cases where there is a legitimacy crisis and/or a repressive apparatus unwillingness to do its job, only then regime change may happen.

AngryData5• 6 months ago

Thank you, everyone always likes to harp on about non-violent resistance, but that really only works when there is a further threat behind not accepting the non-violent demands.

bonsai_spool• 6 months ago

Groups like Black Panthers...

This is a little ahistoric, to the point where I'd appreciate if you provided scholarly sources about your overall argument.

This is years before the founders of the Black Panther Party went to college:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party

jgwil2• 6 months ago

That seems to have become the received wisdom on the subject in certain circles but I do wonder how strong the evidence of this dynamic actually is.

qntty• 6 months ago

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.
I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

I always have to go back to read this part again because I feel like it's so unexpected. You don't really hear anyone saying quite the same thing today.

roxolotl• 6 months ago

It’s pretty classic civil disobedience. In my mind it’s really the founding principle of the states. There is a difference between what is legal and what is just. For the past 250 years what is just has continually evolved and expanded.

Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

- Civil Disobedience

verisimi• 6 months ago

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application.

When is it just in its application?

dijit17• 6 months ago

More often than not, I would argue.

There's a reason that due process is a thing, it's more commonly upheld than it's not, no matter what rhetoric you've been spun by a fear-mongering media.

dayvid2• 6 months ago

People have too much to lose nowadays. Having a jail or protesting history gives you a black mark if you're middle class and you have to pursue alternate avenues to provide for yourself and your family. It's a last resort and has allowed a lot of insidious things to grow in US gov't and outside

pkkim3• 6 months ago

Hmmm. When I was in college, I protested and went to jail multiple times in the US, though I was never convicted (the organization I was with provided for legal representation). I don't believe it has ever damaged my career. I'm curious if your experience has been different?

JKCalhoun• 6 months ago

Really?

Well, when they have nothing left to lose, watch out, I guess.

shipman05• 6 months ago

The men and women who protested with MLK Jr. risked physical harm and death. Many of them paid the ultimate price. So it's hard to argue they didn't have much to lose.

I do take your point, though. Civil disobedience and a digital trail of "undesirable" behavior isn't compatible with a high-earning life in the corporate world.

pear014• 6 months ago

People have too much to lose nowadays?

Many of King's contemporaries died for this. He was shot and killed. The FBI tried to blackmail him and get him to commit suicide.

I would rather people just admit they are cowards. It is fine, most people are. But saying people have too much to lose nowadays as if this is a contemporary phenomenon is just disingenuous. People always have much to lose, arguably "nowadays" less than ever before.

Maybe the real change is in how things are valued or what society sees as virtues. Perhaps our modern society values wealth more than personal integrity for example. I would suggest though a lot of this is just cope for the fact that people are learning they aren't fit for their heros, they don't belong in the same room let alone the same building. It's easy to valorize King when he's a voice from the past. The people who stay home today are the same who stayed home then. The American revolution was really instigated by a minority of the colonial population. Most people stay home.

It's just a basic fact of humanity - most people are cowards, and that is probably fine. If they weren't society would likely never exist in the first place. What does a polity even look like in a land where everyone is a hero?

propagandist• 6 months ago

https://youtu.be/YKnJL2jfA5A

Kwame Ture talks about what it takes for nonviolence to work.

zer00eyz• 6 months ago

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application.

There is another side to this coin: jury nullification.

The fact that, most Americans, are unaware of the concept, or that it is a choice they can make is one of the tragedies of the modern era. Adams had much to say on the topic, and his take is still valid 200 years later.

massysett• 6 months ago

I think that when you put most Americans in a jury box, they will learn that whether they vote to convict is their choice. Ask the guy who threw the sandwich.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Sean_Dunn

AngryData5• 6 months ago

I don't think you hear it much these days because the punishments are extremely harsh and the best you can hope for is the state merely extorting thousands of dollars out of you and a life-long black mark for employment. Ive had jobs grinding raw castings in 100+ degree environments that full time that paid less than $30K which required background checks.

Unless you got $10K+ to drop on a private lawyer before hand, going to court in the US is a HUGE risk that in most cases is going to cost you many thousands of dollars in court fees and fines regardless with the risk of more jail time and more fees if you can't pay it off on their schedule.

baubino• 6 months ago

I don't think you hear it much these days because the punishments are extremely harsh

Civil rights activists, including King, lost their lives for daring to challenge injustice. The penalties are no more severe today than they were then.

Capricorn2481• 6 months ago

I always have to go back to read this part again because I feel like it's so unexpected. You don't really hear anyone saying quite the same thing today

The landscape has completely changed. No authority in charge entertains the idea that the law should be respected, it's not surprising citizens reciprocate.

ncr1003• 6 months ago

And the "unjust" principle works in the opposite direction, nowadays, for ICE / certain US Federal employees.

Justice is supposedly enabled / supported by the law against second-degree murder. And it's is unlikely to be applied to the ICE officer who shot Renee Good unnecessarily:

- https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/01/17/rene...

estearum6• 6 months ago

ICE is actually routinely breaking both the letter and the spirit of the law. There are now dozens of videos of them harassing, intimidating, beating, or detaining people for exercising protected speech.

A spokesperson for DHS just last week openly said that they're allowed to arrest people based on "reasonable suspicion" which is unambiguously illegal.

pjc50• 6 months ago

The ultimate expression of this is the Presidential pardon, a pass entitling privileged people to one or more free crimes.

watwut3• 6 months ago

One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.

I would not say this one, because I simply strongly disagree. Simple as that. No, nazi opposition did not needes to let yourself be tortured in camp to be valid. Nor communist one.

As a demand, it is absurd on its face. Yeah, you should weight the level of risk and loss. And you dont need to aim for self harm when opposing something bad.

ameliaquining• 6 months ago

I reread this every year on this day.

collinmcnulty2• 6 months ago

Likewise, and I always find something new in it. It is always more challenging than I remember it.

CGMthrowaway4• 6 months ago

An alt-right lunatic could use this argument to suggest that those certain and particular J6ers who assembled openly, did not conceal identity, did not use force, nor make forcible entry, nor threaten others, ought never to have been arrested and jailed.

But that's crazy talk.

pstuart• 6 months ago

It was the storming of the capitol itself that was the problem. It was closed to the public and entered by force.

dayvid2• 6 months ago

They didn't have nonviolence trainings ahead of it. It was an unorganized to loosely organized mob, which is the hallmark of most modern movements today

wat100005• 6 months ago

I’m sure all the police officers who were injured that day would be surprised to learn they did not use force.

CGMthrowaway4• 6 months ago

You seem to be generalizing a whole group of people. I was careful to say "certain and particular J6ers." Collective punishment is not a thing in the US justice system

collinmcnulty2• 6 months ago

I always re-read this on MLK day and learn something new each time. Pull quote for this year

“All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

I think this pairs well with and contrasts to the quote that I think many prefer to quote, that “the arc of history is long, but it tends toward justice”.

kelseyfrog• 6 months ago

I'm forever grateful that Letter From Birmingham Jail was required reading during my highschool education(US history). It came during an impactful time - when I naturally questioned authority, but didn't have the wisdom to discern why or how.

Reading it left not a momentary effect, but a life long impression. It's nice to be re-examine it every few years and to notice new details that come with the perspective of recent events.

I'm, of course, grateful to Dr King for writing it, but also to the history teacher 25 years ago who decided to include it in the curriculum. When we're surrounded by self re-enforcing authority, it's takes individuals with courage to choose to share texts like these and its effect is appreciated.

ksymph• 6 months ago

Martin Luther King Jr. has had a profound impact on my thinking, and is the historical figure who captivates me above all others. I am glad to see his writing appear on HN.

One concept which has pervaded my thinking recently due to personal circumstance is of forgiveness. I tend towards 'forgive but not forget'; I don't feel particularly attached to the past, but neither am I willing to let go of it. In one of his speeches [0] he addresses this directly.

He says that forgiving but not forgetting is not true forgiveness; but neither should you ignore one's past transgressions. Forgiveness is being willing to forge a new relationship. Not one built on history, but independent of it. The willingness to give a fresh start to those who seek it.

Another, more well-known idea he spoke of (that folks here are likely familiar with) is that of hate only adding to hate. I'll just leave his words here directly:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

[0] https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/lov...

corry• 6 months ago

What a timeless banger, you fill in the blanks on this part:

'Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of __________ <American political leader> dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when __________ <American political leader> gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred?"'

jmyeet• 6 months ago

I want to call out this part, which is just as relevant today as it was 60+ years ago:

I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

What MLK is talking about how the "white moderate" sides with the oppressors by defending the status quo and choosing "order" over progress.

This is the exact schism that currently exists in the Democratic Party today. If you pay attention to American politics, you'll probably have an idea that there is a civil war within the Democratic Party between "liberals" and "leftists". "Liberals", the same "white moderates", defend American imperialism, want to put a smiley face on ICE rather than abolishing it and basically just want to be "Republican lite".

These policies are deeply unpoular with the base, such the the net approval of the Democratic Party is at historic lows [1]. This isn't incompetence. It's a choice to favor the donor class and their future job prospects over the interests of their base.

A lot of these "white moderates" today get angry at leftists (way more than at Republicans, ironically) for being "single issue voters" about Palestine since that's now become a litmus test for candidates in primary season. First, they don't understand what a single issue voter actually is. Second, and more importantly, there's not a single politician who has a good stance on racial justice and equality, women's rights and so on that has a bad position on Palestine. There is a refusal to see how these things are interconnected.

[1] https://civiqs.com/results/favorable_democrats?uncertainty=t...

ndiddy• 6 months ago

You can see it in the Democratic party leadership's response to Renee Good's murder. Cory Booker just proposed ( https://x.com/SenBooker/status/2011795625835114641 ) that ICE should be reformed by adopting higher training standards and requiring body cameras, when her killer was a 10-year ICE veteran and Good's murder was caught on three different cameras.

The only practical response to the situation in Minneapolis is abolishing ICE, firing every employee from the top to the bottom, forbidding by law whatever agency replaces ICE from hiring anyone who has ever previously worked there, and appointing a special prosecutor to vigorously investigate any wrongdoing by former agents. Unfortunately, we're stuck with an opposition party with no clear vision and leadership that would rather do nothing even when their inaction leads to major social unrest and injustice.

shimman3• 6 months ago

Cory Booker is the definition of performative opposition. He is a theater kid in DC. Still can't believe how many fools thought he was accomplishing something by filibustering nothing for about a day. I'm sure it got him many donations to pay his friends + family nice consulting jobs tho.

doctorpangloss• 6 months ago

While I agree that supporting "status quo" is a central part of electability in US politics, by all means, if you have strong opinions about things, go get elected. Go run. There are plenty of places where you can become very powerful without having to go through a primary - all Louisiana offices, San Francisco, and numerous non-partisan roles throughout government everywhere, and anyway, you can get RCV passed, just like it is in some big US cities, which is to say...

You're talking about ideas that keep failing in elections, and then you demand just one more election but with different voters, and then find out that voters there don't like it either, so at what point do you admit you are wrong? That your idea of "good stance" is actually a "bad stance"? Another POV is, your grievance is, fundamentally, projection.

labrador• 6 months ago

My daughter was about the age of King's daughter when I first read this letter. It had a deep and profound effect and strengthened my commitment to racial and gender equality:

when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"

heresie-dabord• 6 months ago

"Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"

Son, we are all human beings. There's only one way to make sense of it. It's economic slavery. Some people get rich making other people work for nothing... or for very little pay and food. If the rich people keep the poor people struggling in poverty, the poor people may never find the strength to free themselves. They'll be slaves for generations.

tolerance• 6 months ago

This letter reads like a relic of democratic optimism that I find difficult to bear.

The dichotomy between Martin and Malcolm that people like to draw is tired and ‘undeveloper’ does a better job at criticizing this than I think I could. [1]

One of the advantages that Malcolm had over Martin was how deft he was at articulating the spoil in American government.

Read “The Ballot or the Bullet”; jump to page nine here for my point: https://bpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.middlebury.edu/dist/0/20...

Malcolm representing the side of ‘violence’ in the non-violent/violent dichotomy is him being a realist about the situation that Black people were facing in the US since their arrival in the country. I think a more profound point of his that’s glossed over is that you cannot simply legislate equality into existence and that framing the treatment of Blacks in the US as a ‘civil rights’ issue was a misaddress of the issue.

But I think a lot of people are satisfied to settle for the appeal of what Martin and Malcolm's ideologies/methodologies represent on the surface. A matter of rhetoric, I suppose.

Both men’s politics seem frozen by men of time in ways that are easy for common observers to grasp. Never mind the evolution of thought that both men experienced in the years (and in the case of Malcolm, months, practically) before their assassinations.

So yeah. Riots are the voice of the unheard. Short of five years after this letter people throughout the US spent a “Holy Week” perpetuating that maxim.

I don’t know where this remark is going...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46684113

BrenBarn3• 6 months ago

Just as relevant now as ever. This part strikes me particularly:

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

I think that one of the great failures of our society and our government has been our willingness to allow large gaps to form between a law and its application. We constantly hear about laws that are "on the books but not enforced". We constantly pass laws to remedy perceived ills, but we don't fund or even specify enforcement mechanisms (or we make such mechanisms ineffective), so the laws just add to the pile of unpaid promissory notes that King refers to in another famous passage. (Ironically the civil rights legislation that King fought for is an example of this.)

I also wonder what King would say if we could ask him today about what he says here. In the situation he describes, is it really the ordinance itself that becomes unjust, or can it be that the ordinance itself remains just while it is the enforcement process itself that is unjust?

We seem too content to allow decisions about the provisions of a law to be separated from decisions about how those provisions are implemented; we allow innumerable people (e.g., police officers) discretion to make their own decisions about what the law means. This leaves space for those people to interpose their own personal biases and beliefs between the law and its operation. I think we need to fix that.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)

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