Martin Luther King Jr.

7 Pages 1704 Words

History is made up of significant events that shape our future, and leaders who influence

our destiny. Martin Luther King launched the American Civil Rights movement in the 1955

Montgomery Bus Boycott as the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association. He was

later named to the board of directors of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in

1957. His book Why We Can’t Wait outlines the important events of Civil Rights in the early

1960’s. Why We Can’t Wait centers on his Letter from Birmingham Jail and is bookended with

an historical account of the events leading to his arrest of April 12, 1963. The year 1963 marked

the 100-year anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and Martin Luther King asks two

questions: why should we wait for emancipation? And aware of what White Americans were

doing to Black Americans, “What is the Negro doing for himself?” (King p. 8) Martin Luther

King concludes by pointing out the importance of expanding on the current campaign, what his

hopes are for the future, why he wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail, why the campaign was the

right thing to do, why America was a better place in January of 1964 than it was in January of

1963, and why America can’t wait any longer to be wholly free.

Before Letter from Birmingham Jail can be fully understood, an historical foundation

must first be established. “In the summer of 1963 a need and a time and a circumstance and the

mood of a people came together.” (King p. 13) Martin Luther King outlines the conditions of

Black America in the early 1960’s, the steps they were taking to change their condition, and goes

into detail the conditions that existed specifically in Birmingham, Alabama. The Black

community was disappointed in the slow progress being made to de-segregate the school system.

With the Presidential election of John F. Kennedy, th...