--- title: Martin Luther King Jr's Letter From a Birmingham Jail—Why He Was There description: King wrote the famous Letter From a Birmingham Jail on April 16, 1963 canonical: https://time.com/3773914/mlk-birmingham-jail/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-04-16T14:00:17.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:59:29.049Z article:section: History og:title: Martin Luther King Jr's Letter From a Birmingham Jail—Why He Was There og:description: King wrote the famous Letter From a Birmingham Jail on April 16, 1963 og:url: https://time.com/3773914/mlk-birmingham-jail/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5057c4473ee21816/69878704a988ca29166ad437/mlk.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: CIVIL RIGHTS MARCH og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Martin Luther King Jr's Letter From a Birmingham Jail—Why He Was There twitter:description: King wrote the famous Letter From a Birmingham Jail on April 16, 1963 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5057c4473ee21816/69878704a988ca29166ad437/mlk.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why MLK Was Jailed in Birmingham > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=51840ac4-edf6-4eb8-80ea-1e7b29552e4a&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=51840ac4-edf6-4eb8-80ea-1e7b29552e4a&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Ava DuVernay and David Oyelowo on [Watch (HLS stream): Ava DuVernay and David Oyelowo on](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/H4cNz19h.m3u8) (2:52)  _Published 2015-01-07. Director Ava DuVernay and actor David Oyelowo discuss their new Golden Globe-nominated movie_  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Apr 16, 2015 2:00 PM UTC  Rev. Ralph Abernathy, left, and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., right are taken by a policeman as they led a line of demonstrators into the business section of Birmingham, Ala., on April 12, 1963\. This is the photograph that ran with TIME's original coverage of their arrests. Rev. Ralph Abernathy, left, and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., right are taken by a policeman as they led a line of demonstrators into the business section of Birmingham, Ala., on April 12, 1963\. This is the photograph that ran with TIME's original coverage of their arrests. AP Photo  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Apr 16, 2015 2:00 PM UTC In the spring of 1963, in Birmingham, Ala., it seemed like progress was finally being made on civil rights. The notoriously violent segregationist police commissioner “Bull” Connor had lost his run-off bid for mayor, and despite Martin Luther King Jr.’s declaration that the city was the most segregated in the nation, protests were starting to be met with quiet resignation rather than uproar. At least that’s what TIME thought: in the April 19 issue of that year, under the headline “[Poorly Timed Protest,](http://time.com/vault/issue/1963-04-19/page/44)” the magazine cast King as an outsider who did not consult the city’s local activists and leaders before making demands that set back Birmingham’s progress and drew Bull Connor’s ire. “Last week Connor and Police Chief Jamie Moore got an injunction against all demonstrations from a state court,” TIME reported. “King announced that he would ignore it, led some 1,000 Negroes toward the business district. Both King and one of his top aides, the Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, were promptly thrown into jail.” King was in jail for about a week before being released on bond, and it was clear that TIME’s editors weren’t the only group that thought he had made a misstep in Birmingham. On the day of his arrest, a group of clergymen wrote [an open letter](http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/letter-birmingham-city-jail-0#) in which they called for the community to renounce protest tactics that caused unrest in the community, to do so in court and “not in the streets.” It was that letter that prompted King to draft, on this day, April 16, the famous document known as Letter From a Birmingham Jail. In 1967, King ended up spending[ another five days ](http://time.com/vault/issue/1967-11-10/page/38/)in jail in Birmingham, along with three others, after their appeals of their contempt convictions failed. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in [_Walker v. City of Birmingham_](https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/388/307/case.html) that they were in fact in contempt of court because they could not test the constitutionality of the injunction without going through the motions of applying for the parade permit that the city had announced they would not receive if they did apply for one. The decision prompted King to write, in a [statement](http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/mlk-announces-jail-sentences-stemming-1963-birmingham-demonstrations), that though he believed the Supreme Court decision set a dangerous precedent, he would accept the consequences willingly. “Our purpose when practicing civil disobedience is to call attention to the injustice or to an unjust law which we seek to change,” he wrote—and going to jail, and eloquently explaining why, would do just that. Need more proof that the original letter was convincing? Though TIME dismissed the protests when they first occurred, that letter was included was included in the issue the following January in which King was named the Man of the Year for 1963\. “Although in the tumble of events then and since, it never got the notice it deserved,” the magazine noted, “it may yet live as a classic expression of the Negro revolution of 1963.” **_Read excerpts from the letter, which was included in Martin Luther King Jr’s Man of the Year cover story, here in the TIME Vault:_** [Letter from a Birmingham Jail](http://time.com/vault/issue/1964-01-03/page/21/) ## Transcript Well they don't teach anything about Dr. King or the Civil Rights Movement in ,- Is that true? In schools. In the UK? Well it's the United Kingdom, not the United States. No. But he's a worldwide icon. What do you know about the United Kingdom in your schools? Oh. True. Touche. [ LAUGH ] But, you know, Dr. King is an icon, in the same way that Mandela is an icon, in the same way that Gandhi is an icon, and so, therefore, you are aware. Aware of him, and I was aware of him admittedly in a very peripheral way. What I need to know right now what' Martin Luther King about to do next? I have a dream. I can think of nothing worse than having to do the I have a. I Have a Dream speech. I mean really, I, I, it's like doing to be or not to be in Hamlet. It's just at that point not to denigrate the speech. It's a bit like doing a karaoke song. What you want in playing a character like Dr. King is you want it to a revelatory otherwise go and watch a documentary, go and read a book. One of the genius, elements of. Of Selma is choosing to do just those three months because ironically you get more of a sense of the man by going into a time where he's under pressure. [ INAUDIBLE ] when a mans stands up and says enough is enough. These are all the things that reveal who the human being. Is great storytelling, great, writing, is always going through the highest moment of tension. The deepest moment of conflict. And that's what this represented. And it's also the greatest moment of triumph for this, for SCLC. [ MUSIC ] You think about a couple of years ago, where we were very focused on the tragedy around Oscar Grant. And we would say, Oscar. Oscar Grant. We think about last year when we were talking about Trayvon Martin, we'd say the Trayvon Case. Around this summer, we kept hearing, Ferguson, which is the name of a whole community. Similar to the way people talk about Sama and not when Jenny legi, Jackson and it, something different. A catalyst that has triggered action within a whole community and a community that. You know, stands up to police aggression, raises its hand and says breaking up a black body is not acceptable. And maybe not knowing exactly how to articulate that. And maybe it comes out initially in rage or unrest or whatever but, it's been really beautiful to me over the last months to see the way that that unrest has blossomed. [ MUSIC ] Into a very targeted civil disobedience, with a lot of boots on the ground. A lot of people really organizing themselves. Selma is not a film that takes place in the context of history. You watch those images, and you, you understand how it feels to be someone in 1955, being shocked about what they see on TV. 'Cuz it just happened to you in August. 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