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M Artin l uther K ing J r .
2019 special edition
January 16, 2019
You’re invited
3 to 6 p.m.
Tuesday, Feb.20
photo by
C harles M oore
Dr. Martin Luther Kling Jr. being arrested for “loitering” while present at a colleague’s court
case in Montgomery, Ala. in 1958.
King on Civil Disobedience
Leader saw his arrests
as last resort in the
face of unjust laws
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Baptist minis-
ter from Atlanta and best known spokesperson
for the modern civil rights movement, success-
fully organized nonviolent protests and civil
disobedience against Jim Crow laws that en-
forced segregation. His efforts helped achieve
passage of the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964
and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” one
of the late civil rights leader’s most articulate
justifications for nonviolent resistance to rac-
ism, he responds to a public statement of con-
cern and caution signed by eight white religious
leaders of the South at the time.
It was in the immediate aftermath of a 1963
campaign by the Southern Christian Leader-
ship Conference, of which King was president,
against segregation and economic injustice in
Birmingham, Ala., and the resistance involved
occupying public spaces with sit-ins, and open-
ly violating laws they considered unjust.
King was arrested early on in the campaign
and from his cell composed the open letter.
King reaffirmed the fact that negotiation was
the best means for progress on any matter, but
clarified that civil disobedience was a last resort
when those in power refuse to allow for discus-
sions aimed at reaching a mutual agreement in
the face of unjust laws.
“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create
such a crisis and establish such creative tension
that a community that has consistently refused
to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It
seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no
longer be ignored,” he wrote.
King drew his philosophies from Christian
theology and other nonviolent leaders through-
out history, like India’s Mahatma Ghandi, who
had successfully led his country to indepen-
dence from British rule by employing civil dis-
obedience.
The campaign in Birmingham was a success
as Eugene Connor, the city’s police chief who
authorized the use of high pressure water jets
and police dogs against protestors, including
children, lost his job and the signs designating
segregation in local shops came down, open-
ing the door for blacks to be accepted in public
spaces.
Nationally broadcast news footage of those
protests also crystallized the civil rights move-
ment’s supporters, both for the whites who
were shocked by the images and for black
Americans. Today, King’s philosophies and ac-
tions have had a lasting influence on the work
to advance civil rights.