• an [[open letter]].
  • by [[Martin Luther King]].
  • #1963

  • It says that people have a moral responsibility to [[break unjust laws]] and to [[take direct action]] rather than waiting potentially forever for justice to come through the courts.

    • -> [[civil disobedience]]:
      • [[injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere]]
      • [[justice too long delayed is justice denied]]
      • [[an unjust law is no law at all]]
  • Led to [[Why We Can't Wait]], a book which includes this letter and expands on it.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

[[Martin Luther King]].

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."

[[direct action]].