["Letter from Birmingham Jail"]
By Martin Luther King, Jr.

Markup and Proofreading by MU Students and Staff, Madison Diba

Sources

Chicago, IL , June 12, 1963The first typewritten copy of King's letter was put together by Willie Pearl Mackey, secretary to Wyatt Tee Walker, Executive Director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, from notes smuggled out of Birmingham City Jail (Samford Library Special Collection). The letter was originally written as a letter--it was addressed to Bishop C. C. J. Carpenter, Bishop Joseph A. Durick, Rabbi Milton L. Grafman, Bishop Nolan B. Harmon, The Rev. George H. Murray, The rev. Edward V. Ramabe, and The Rev. Earl Stallings. The letter was dated from Birmingham City Jail, April 16, 1963. King closed the letter with the salutation, "Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood." This digital edition uses the text first officially published in the June 12, 1963 issue of The Christian Century. You can see the earliest typescript at the Samford Library Special Collection website.

Editorial Statements

Research informing these annotations draws on publicly-accessible resources, with links provided where possible. Annotations have also included common knowledge, defined as information that can be found in multiple reliable sources. If you notice an error in these annotations, please contact lic.open.anthology@gmail.com.

Original spelling and capitalization is retained, though the long s has been silently modernized and ligatured forms are not encoded.

Hyphenation has not been retained, except where necessary for the sense of the word.

Page breaks have been retained. Catchwords, signatures, and running headers have not.

Materials have been transcribed from and checked against first editions, where possible. See the Sources section for more information.

Citation

King, Martin Luther, Jr.. "Letter from Birmingham Jail". The Christian Century, , June 12, 1963 . Literature in Context: An Open Anthology. http://anthology.lib.virginia.edu/work/King/king-birmingham. Accessed: 2025-02-05T14:17:28.146Z