Radicalism of Nonviolence in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

Abstract

Non-violent direct action was a method of protest in the U.S.-American civil rights movement. Martin Luther King, Jr., among others, used it to contest segregation. In this article, I suggest that King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963) deliberately confronts white moderates and aims to highlight the violence against African Americans in the United States. In the letter, King claims that justice does not happen by itself and needs non-violent direct actions. In this respect, King’s approach is not that different from Malcolm X’s, against which King is traditionally positioned. To make this case, I examine King’s perception of civil rights history, engage with the ideology of colorblindness and consider King’s non-violent philosophy. Subsequently, the article turns to the radicalism of King’s letter and argues that he saw white moderates as problematic in the struggle for racial justice. Finally, I address King’s understanding of direct action, which stems from the concept of civil disobedience. In doing so, this article also discusses similarities between King and other civil rights activists like Malcolm X and Mahatma Gandhi with regard to racial movement tactics. I conclude with a discussion of King’s philosophy of nonviolence as an immediate action against violence. Ultimately, this article not only discards the idea of King being best understood as a proponent of passiveness but also shows how intellectually active he was in combating racial injustice.