Letter from Birmingham Jail

King responds to the charge that he is an 'outside agitator' by explaining his organizational ties to Birmingham, his invitation to come, and his deeper philosophical argument that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

King outlines the four stages of any nonviolent campaign — fact-finding, negotiation, self-purification, direct action — and explains why Birmingham's Black community had exhausted the first three before taking to the streets. He confronts the word 'wait.'

King develops the letter's central philosophical argument: the distinction between just and unjust laws, drawing on Augustine, Aquinas, Buber, and Tillich. He explains why breaking an unjust law openly and lovingly is the highest form of respect for law.

King identifies the greatest obstacle to Black freedom not as the Klansman or the White Citizens' Council member but as the white moderate who prefers order to justice, who paternalistically sets the timetable for another man's freedom, and who confuses the absence of tension with the presence of peace.

King responds to being labeled an extremist by redefining the term — citing Jesus, Amos, Paul, Martin Luther, John Bunyan, Lincoln, and Jefferson as extremists. He then expresses his deepest disappointment: the failure of the white church to stand with the movement.

King expresses confidence that the movement will prevail, warns that the alternative to nonviolent resistance is not peace but violent upheaval, commends the demonstrators, and closes with a pastoral benediction — written from a jail cell by a man who has not been defeated.