Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, April 16, 1963, Martin Luther King writes a letter from a Birmingham jail.

King used the bits of paper he had access to to write this influential plea to American moderates.

It is a letter that has had tons of ripple effects in the years. And here to discuss it, we're joined, as always, by Nicole Hammer of Columbia. Hello, Nikki. Welcome back. Hey, Jody. And Jamel Bowie of the New York Times is with this as well. He's on a little run of three shows. So, Jamel, welcome back to you. Thank you for having me. So there's the MLK that

I guess shows up on like posters or t-shirts or gets tweeted and inspirational quotes. And then

there's the MLK who fought for economic justice and was an anti-war activist. Which MLK, they're all

the same MLK, I understand, but which MLK Jamel is on display in this letter? The latter MLK, they're all the same MLK, I understand, but which MLK Jamel is on display in this letter?

The latter MLK, the radical MLK, it's funny, in public imagination MLK is basically someone who says,

you should treat people nice and not be mean.

But in a letter from a Brumkin jail, MLK is speaking specifically to that segment of the American population whose view is, yes, you can disagree with things, but you should be nice and listen to the authorities.

And the letter is explicitly saying, no, this is tantamount to asking us to tolerate injustice.

And it's still a very powerful read today.

I studied it in college with the theology professor who saw it as sort of akin to an

epistle.

That's the amount of intellectual and theological power he thought it had.

Yeah.

So the letter is written in response to basically a bunch of white clergymen

saying, go slow, right? So, Nikki, what is that tension, you know, about civility and speed and playing

within the rules, as Jamel was describing? And can we see this as a break for MLK in any way?

It is a break in a certain sense. I mean, King had had this message

for quite some time, although he didn't always have a national audience paying attention to what

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