King passionately believed that the civil rights struggle could not be won through the courts. The courts themselves, especially the state courts of the South, were part of an apparatus of racial oppression that had existed for centuries. They could not, therefore, be relied upon to deliver equality for African Americans.

In any case, what King and the civil rights movement were fighting for was not just the kind of legal or formal equality—such as the right to vote—achievable through the courts. What they wanted more than anything else was substantive equality: that which related to housing and employment opportunities. And for that, it was sometimes necessary to adopt direct-action tactics, albeit non-violent.

For King, the civil rights movement wasn't just a legal or political cause; it was nothing less than a moral crusade. Fighting for civil rights was the right thing to do, part of a noble tradition of standing up to evil and injustice that went back to the early Christians.

Sometimes this would involve breaking the law, unjust laws such as the Jim Crow laws that had kept African Americans in a state of subjection for the better part of a hundred years. Working through a legal system which had given rise to and endorsed such formal discrimination and segregation for so long was therefore counter-productive and would achieve little or nothing.