MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is a famous piece, and rightly so. Yet few people have read it in its entirety, and I constantly see people either misrepresenting its point or badly misunderstanding the vital insights of the Letter. This is particularly true of certain leftist protesters who love to quote King’s criticism of white moderates who didn’t support the civil rights protests. Some version of “Moderates didn’t support the civil rights protests, King called them out as being bad people, and so we call you out as being a bad person for not supporting our protests” is all too common on Twitter. I’ve seen it a lot recently in defense of traffic-blocking protests meant to support Palestine in the context of the war in Gaza. So I’m writing both to educate about the content of King’s letter, and to explain why its lessons simply don’t apply in the case of many contemporary protest movements.
First, a bit of background. King was one of the leaders of the civil rights struggle against the Jim Crow regime in the south, and was arrested for his role in organizing protests. That’s why he was in the Birmingham jail to begin with. At the time, support for the goals of the civil rights movement polled very well, with a clear majority in support. However, support for the protests and demonstrations themselves polled very poorly. There was a large plurality of the country - the “white moderates” - who agreed with the goals of the movement but were against the means that King and his fellow organizers were taking to advance those goals. That plurality (and particularly religious leaders within that plurality) was King’s audience. His goal was to convince people that the means to this end were good and proper.
The first point King makes - obvious enough, but it needs to be stated in this context - is that simple agreement with the ends is not enough to achieve those ends. Some means must be taken. The situation in the south is unjust, and so it is entirely fitting that this injustice be ended, and ended now. Change is always painful; there will never be a better time in the future to seek justice. Rip the bandaid off now, and end the apartheid system.
The obvious objection to this point is that the ends don’t justify the means. So while both King and his audience agree that the end of Jim Crow is a good end being pursued, that doesn’t justify any tactics being used to pursue that end. So King’s main task is to persuade his audience that his tactics are both moral in themselves and also likely to achieve the desired effect.
So he gives a frank description of the movement’s tactics. There is a system of unjust laws in the south that oppress black people. Those laws, like all laws, are ultimately backed up with the threat of government violence. King and his followers were publicly, and en masse, violating those laws, and thus deliberately summoning the violence of the state down on them. They’d sit at whites-only lunch counters, march peacefully down the street, and then get the shit kicked out of them by Bull Connor and his ilk. (And the leaders would be arrested and thrown in Birmingham jails). But they wouldn’t fight back. Instead, they’d have their friends in the media on hand to capture the oppression on camera, and the images they captured would create more sympathy for the cause. And that would place pressure on wavering moderates in congress to overcome the obstruction of southern segregationists and pass civil rights legislation.
These actions are moral in themselves. There’s nothing immoral about marching down the streets and singing. Yes, they involved breaking the law. But the laws themselves are unjust. King argued that it is wrong to break a just law, but not wrong to break an unjust law.
And would the protests have their intended effect? Well, at the time, it was hard to say. The future is uncertain. But King was working on a solid theory of political change, and things actually did play out more or less the way he anticipated. The civil rights movement was a stirring success, and it succeeded precisely because of the effectiveness of King’s style of non-violent protest tactics.
So there’s a lot more going on here than just “get on the boat and support our protests, you lousy moderates.” There’s a huge amount of thought being dedicated to a theory of political change. King takes great care to explain why the protests will be effective.
So let’s compare the situation King faced to the situation of traffic-blocking protests. King’s tactics relied on the assumption that his goals were popular (even if the particular protests weren’t). Traffic-blocking protests are unpopular. But is the pro-Palestinian cause popular? It’s hard to say. Solid majorities seem to support an end to the violence in Gaza, but when the question is framed as a binary Israel vs Palestine choice, support for the Palestinians gets a lot softer. And the policy goal at issue here isn’t vague support for Palestine or an end to violence, but cutting off the US’s material and diplomatic support to Israel. So I suspect that this is not popular. That matters! If most people support your policy but don’t really care, the goal is to force the issue without sacrificing support. If most people don’t support your policy, you have to start by persuading.
But even granting the assumption that the ends are popular, does that mean that the protests are a good idea? Well, are they just in themselves? No. King argued for the justice of his protests by arguing that he was violating laws that were themselves unjust. Traffic-blocking protesters are violating just and sensible traffic laws. And they’re harming others in the process by limiting their freedom of movement along major thoroughfares. So that’s another major disanalogy between the traffic-blocking protests and the demonstrations of the civil rights movement.
And are these protests likely to achieve their goal? Well, it’s hard to say, the future is uncertain. But what’s the theory of political change here? It’s certainly not King’s! The protesters aren’t looking to end unjust laws by publicly exposing themselves to the injustice of enforcing an unjust law. They’re trying to end US aid to Israel by blocking traffic on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. How’s that supposed to work exactly? Is this the terrorist’s theory of political change, “We’ll continue harming innocents until our demands are met”? Or is it the toddler’s theory, “I’m going to keep on screaming until mommy gives me what I want”? Putting things that way sounds absurdly uncharitable, I know - “Are you a terrorist or just a toddler?” - but I don’t see another theory on offer here. And these are notoriously terrible theories of political change! No one likes giving in to terrorists or toddlers. These are strategies guaranteed to cost you whatever sympathy you already enjoyed.
Just speaking for myself here: I’m quite anti-Israel on the current war in Gaza. Israel has conducted itself horribly starting like a week after the October 7 attacks, and the mass civilian death in Gaza is unjustifiable. The US should not be supporting Israel in its war. But when I see traffic-blocking protests on the news, my immediate response isn’t to redouble my support for the anti-Israel lobby in Congress. My immediate response is that we should be using some of those bombs we’re sending to Israel on the traffic-blocking protesters, because fuck those guys. (Of course I don’t actually think that we should be bombing protesters.) I know I’m not alone in that. This is a hugely counter-productive set of protest tactics.
It does King a disservice to summarize his letter as “You better support our protests, you vile squishy moderate.” The Letter from a Birmingham Jail is a serious and nuanced discussion of the morality of protest tactics and the conditions under which they are likely to be effective. Contemporary protesters have a lot to learn from reading it.