Reading the American Past: Printed Page 254

DOCUMENT 28–2

Martin Luther King Jr. Explains Nonviolent Resistance

Participants in the civil rights demonstrations that swept across the South during the 1960s used tactics of nonviolent resistance. Many white Americans, North and South, condemned the demonstrators as extremists and lawbreakers whose ends may have been admirable but whose means were deplorable. Martin Luther King Jr. responded to those views in 1963 in a letter he wrote while in jail in Birmingham, Alabama, where he had been arrested for participating in demonstrations. King's letter, excerpted here, was directed to a group of white clergymen who had criticized the Birmingham demonstrations. King's letter set forth the ideals of nonviolence embraced by many civil rights activists.

Letter from Birmingham City Jail, 1963

This selection has been omitted intentionally in this electronic edition.

From Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” in Why We Can't Wait (New York: Harper & Row, 1984).

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