The Aftermath, Impact, and

Legacy of MLK’s “Letter from a

Birmingham Jail”

• When King first read the clergymen’s letter, he began writing his refutation in the newspaper’s margins.

• When he ran out of room, he used toilet paper and paper sneaked into his cell by friends.

• His response was smuggled out in pieces.

• Released from jail nine days later, he took some time to revise and edit his letter and then released it to the media.

• However, at first, the letter was, for the most part, ignored.

• SCLC’s Birmingham Campaign continued, but this time, recruited children and young people to demonstrate.

• When adults were taken to jail, the economic costs were too great because they could not work or lost their jobs

• On May 2nd, 1963, after three hours, 959 young people jailed.

Parker High School student Mattie Howard being arrested for participating in a protest.

Nonviolent protesters being arrested

After the jails were full, student protesters were incarcerated at county fairground buildings.

• The next day, over a thousand more children stayed out of school to join the demonstrations.

• With no space left to jail them, Police Commissioner Bull Connor ordered firefighters to turn hoses on the children.

• In some cases the water stream was so strong that it broke young people’s bones.

• — Dannela Bryant

"I was really, really involved. I didn't realize at the time how dangerous the situation was. The only thing I was concerned with was that I wanted my freedom, I wanted to be able to go where I wanted, like everyone else did."

— Dannela Bryant

• Connor also brought in K-9 forces, which attacked protesters.

Over the course of the nearly month-long campaign, 2,500 blacks (including one thousand school children) were jailed.

• Finally, the Birmingham business community, fearing damage to downtown stores, agreed to integrate lunch counters and hire more blacks, over the objections of city officials.

• When pictures of Birmingham’s violence were broadcast on TV, Americans became outraged.

• Wanting to understand the events of Birmingham, suddenly, there was a great demand for King’s comments and ideas about the movement, so the media was finally hungry to publish his writing.

• A group of Quakers were the first to publish the ‘Letter’, which they distributed in 50,000 pamphlets.

• Other Christian journals soon began publishing the letter.

• By the end of the summer of ‘63, newspapers and magazines everywhere began featuring the ‘Letter’—often as their cover story.

The Impact of King’s Letter• “The letter had the intended effect of waking

Christian America from their passivity and motivating them to action in behalf of the inalienable and God-given rights of liberty and equality for black Americans.” ~Historian, Janice LeFevre

• The National Council of Churches allocated $300,000 to support civil rights activities.

• Inspired by his letter, religious leaders began putting great pressure on US leaders to act.

• It convinced the media to feature more stories on the civil rights movement.

• Many believe the Birmingham Campaign and King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” of 1963 were the final essential catalysts that inspired leaders to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made segregation in schools, the workplace, and facilities that served the general public illegal.

• Today the letter is considered to be one of the most important documents of the modern civil rights movement.

Other movements King’s letter inspired

• In 1976, during the Cold War, Czechoslovakia's Charter 77, a group attempting to influence the government to improve human rights, had the ‘Letter’ translated and given to people via an underground network.

Other movements King’s letter inspired

• Jamaican reggae singer Bob Marley, who often wrote and performed songs about human rights and government enforced inequalities, kept the text with him for good luck.

“Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!”

Other movements King’s letter inspired

• In the 1980s, South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu quoted King’s ‘Letter’ in his sermons when trying to convince others that apartheid, a government enforced system of racial segregation, should end and that Nelson Mandela, an anti-apartheid protester who was imprisoned for 27 years, should be freed.

Other movements King’s letter inspired

• When an anonymous Chinese student bravely stood in front of tanks, which had been brought in by the government to remove protesters in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, many writers and historians drew connections between this act and the teachings Dr. King expounded in his Birmingham letter.

• In 2011, while addressing the incoming class of Harvard business students, Drew Faust, president of the university, brought her own copy of “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and talked about how King’s words had affected her.

• She asked these future business leaders to reflect on what she considers to be the central question King’s writing poses to all of us:

• What will you do to fight injustice? How will you make the world a better place?

• “These pages of poetry and justice now stand as one of the supreme 20th-century instruction manuals of self-help on how Davids can stand up to Goliaths without spilling blood. As an eternal statement that resonates hope in the valleys of despair, ‘Letter From Birmingham City Jail’ is unrivaled, an American document as distinctive as the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation.”

~Douglas Brinkley, author and professor of History at Rice University