In April 1963 Martin Luther King led a series of peaceful protests against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. On April 12, although a court injunction had ordered to stop the demonstration, King and his associates decided to commit an act of civil disobedience marching in downtown Birmingham. They were arrested and put in jail. The imprisonment lasted for eight days and during that time King wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail” to his fellow clergymen who had criticised his non-violent direct action program.

 

 

You express a great deal of anxiety over or willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. […] The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. […] One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. […]

How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? […] An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

 

Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, has no part in enacting or devising the law. […] Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitutes a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

 

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

 

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law […]. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. […]