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Martin Luther King Jr.Letter From Birmingham Jail
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1963A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Interrelatedness of All Humanity
A central premise of King's nonviolence is that all human beings are related to each other by virtue of their location on the Earth and their shared status as humans in a system King believes was created by God. Although his belief in the interrelatedness of all humanity is based on Christianity, King uses the concept to legitimize his work in Alabama, to make the case for the Civil Rights Movement as a national movement, and to show that its tactics are appropriate responses to longstanding oppression.
King was a native of Atlanta, Georgia, where he helped to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and was a minister in Montgomery, Alabama, when he came to prominence in the Civil Rights Movement. Over the course of the late 1950s and up until his death in 1968, he never confined his activism to his home community.
Instead, King took as his example the early Christians he cites in "Letter from Birmingham Jail," who took their message abroad. King's comments in this particular essay underscore a notion of American and African-American identity that is national instead of regional, especially when he proclaims, "I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" (86). King's belief in this connection ultimately extends to international connections as well. He mentions several times that the protests in Birmingham and other parts of the South must be understood in the wider context of decolonization in African countries.
By reimagining each human being as a citizen of a country andas a citizen of the world, King carves out an ethical basis for activism that pushes against the argument that injustice is just a local concern that can only be resolved by the communities in which injustice occurs.
Politics and the Church
Although the United States enshrined the separation between religion and politics in its foundational documents, religion has always been a powerful force in society. King, a Baptist minister with an advanced degree in theology, uses his faith as the foundation for his politics.
“Letter from Birmingham Jail," which is directed at both a local audience of ministers and a national audience, explains in explicit detail that the protest movement is in the tradition ofearly Christian evangelism. For example, he describes the protestors who sat in at lunch counters as "disinherited children of God" who "were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian [sic] heritage"(111).
King’s perspective on the link between the church and politics also reflects the more specific cultural context of the church in African-American culture and history. The black church served as a space for political organization in the absence of public and legally-sanctioned political participation for African-Americans for much of American history. Black churches played a vital role in organizing African-Americans and providing material, economic, and spiritual support during the Civil Rights Movement.
While the early Christian and modern black church serve as sources of a vibrant tradition of political activism, the mainline churches represented by the Alabama clergymen presenta disappointing contrast, in King’s opinion. These churches counseled complacency or even active opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. While King acknowledges that not all clergymen sat on the sidelines, he takes the modern church to task for failing to live up to the example of the early Christians.
Nonviolent Direct Action versus Violence
Nonviolent direct action is a form of activism that seeks to create conditions that directly pressure the power structure to change or to make clear for a larger audience that the power structure is engaged in oppression that should not be allowed to stand. As a strategy, nonviolent direct action is congruent with King’s Christianity and his rejection of black nationalism.
King’s belief in nonviolence stems from the precedent of the early Christian church and an American tradition of civil disobedience. King cites Jesus and early Christians like the Apostle Paul as people whose nonviolence and attacks on the status quo stemmed from their Christian convictions. There is also an American protest tradition that is nonviolent, and King cites the Boston Tea Party, for example, as just one of many nonviolent means that early Americans used to protest injustice.
King also argues that nonviolence can provide a constructive outlet for the frustration and anger African-Americans experience after centuries of oppression. King celebrates the heroism of African-American protestors, especially their “sublime courage [and] willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation” (110). This heroism counters negative stereotypes and shows that black embrace of nonviolence is preferable to the alternative of violence.
It is important to understand that at this moment, nonviolent direct action was just one of several possible responses to the continued oppression of African-Americans.Other groups advocated for violence or armed resistance during the 1960s, while some figures argued for a more gradual approach to change because of their fear of civil disorder. Malcolm X, then a member of the Nation of Islam, for example, argued for black separation from whites and armed resistance when attacked. King labeled such beliefs as examples of the “bitterness and hatred” that would end violently if other channels for constructive change were not allowed.
While King's embrace of nonviolence reflects his belief in Christianity, it grows out of pragmatic concerns, such as its ability to improve representations of African-American identity and his belief that violence has not historically been effective in securing change.
Related Titles
By Martin Luther King Jr.
