My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. …You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. He was assassinated four years later in Memphis, Tennessee.Ĭopy of King’s letter from Birmingham jail (Samford University Special Collections) In 1964, at the age of 35, King became the youngest-ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. King also expressed sharp disappointment with white moderates, whom he called here “the Negro’s great stumbling block” in the fight for racial equality. While detained in the Birmingham city jail for leading a march without a permit, King responded to criticism from eight white local clergymen who had denounced “outside” activism, while appealing for patience in what they termed, “A Call for Unity.” King’s vigorous response, dated April 16, 1963, made the case for nonviolent confrontation. State and local government officials tried to stop these protests, arresting many campaign organizers. In 1963, King’s grassroots organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, teamed up with local civil rights groups in nearby Birmingham to initiate a protest campaign against one of the South’s most notoriously segregated cities.

He became a national celebrity following his public role during the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. He married Coretta Scott, whom he met in Boston, they started a family, and he began his ministry in Montgomery, Alabama. King grew up in Georgia, the son of a well-known pastor, graduated from Morehouse College as a teenager and then studied theology in Pennsylvania before receiving a doctorate from Boston University. ( 1929-1968) was a Baptist minister and world-famous civil rights activist. INTRODUCTION King in the Birmingham city jail (University of Memphis Libraries) I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice