King writes the Letter from Birmingham Jail
1963 · Event
Jailed for marching without a permit and rebuked by white clergymen for impatience, King answers in the margins of a newspaper: justice too long delayed is justice denied, and one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Smuggled out in instalments, the Letter becomes the movement's defining text.
On these timelines: The Civil Rights Movement, USA, Arts and Thoughts, Master
More from The Civil Rights Movement
- US Civil Rights Movement (1954)
- Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat (1955)
- Montgomery bus boycott (1955)
- Selma to Montgomery marches (1965)
- The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing (1963)
- Birmingham campaign (1963)
- Freedom Summer (1964)
- The murder of Medgar Evers (1963)
Around 1963
- Cuban Revolutionary War (1953)
- Watergate scandal (1972)
- The Troubles (1968)
- Apollo 11 moon landing (1969)
- Yom Kippur War (1973)
- Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
- Vietnam War (American phase) (1965)
- Suez Crisis (1956)
- Six-Day War (1967)
- Prague Spring (1968)