This letter, written by Martin Luther King Jr. during a sentence he was serving in Birmingham Jail, Alabama, was a response to a public statement released by eight white Southern religious leaders. They had urged King to be cautious in his political activity and advocacy of black rights, particularly in the volatile southern districts. King’s response, therefore, must be read in the context of a beleaguered minority activist responding to the racially dominant group of his area .

In the first paragraph, King mentions that he believes the churchmen are “men of genuine good will,” and are not merely trying to evoke an inflammatory response from the public. King states that although he usually does not respond to criticisms of his activism because they are much too plentiful, their genuine nature and the sincerity of their request encouraged him to treat them with the same respect.

King mentions that he is a part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and that this organization has many divisions in the South, including in Birmingham Alabama. One characteristic of these organizations was that they often supported one another financially and through collective actions, such as in leading protests. The Birmingham division called on Dr. King to engage in a non-violent direct-action program to advocate for equal rights in the South. King says that “when the hour came we lived up to our promises” in order to indicate that he and his supporters held true to their word, even though they knew it would come at severe personal risk to themselves.

In the third paragraph, King compares himself both to eighteenth-century colonial missionaries and to the apostle Paul of Tarsus, a first-century Christian martyr who traveled around the Roman empire and spread the word of Jesus. King notes that both the missionaries and Paul put themselves at tremendous risk in their efforts to spread their faith. They did so regardless, however, because of their steadfast conviction about the necessity and moral purity of what they were preaching. King likens his own conviction to these historical figures in order to draw a parallel between their desire to spread the Christian faith and his own attempt to correct the “injustice” that plagued Birmingham.

Finally, King asserts that “we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny,” in order to emphasize how the need to rectify injustice against black Americans in Birmingham reflects a larger need to rectify similar injustices nationwide. He mentions that he has been to other black communities, specifically in Atlanta, and notes that the issues facing people there resonate throughout the black community as a whole. Thus, by evoking his experiences with black communities across the country, King successfully creates an image of a unified, non-violent black community. He further goes on to say that violence directed against any one part of this community is a metaphorical act of violence against the entire community.