![]() The following day, while still in jail, he penned a remarkable book-length open letter. King had dedicated his life to eradicating - the hijacking of what should be “common sense” to all in the service of what is “common” and convenient to only those in power - that he felt compelled to respond. It was such a blatant example of the very injustice Dr. King’s arrest, eight male Alabama clergymen issued a public statement directed at him, titled “The Call for Unity,” following a letter penned a few months earlier under the title “An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense.” They accused him of being an “outsider” to the community’s cause, suggested that racial injustice in Alabama shouldn’t be his business, and claimed that the nonviolent resistance demonstrations he led were “unwise and untimely.” “We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations,” they wrote. On April 12, he was violently arrested on the charge of parading without a permit, per an injunction against “parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing” that a local circuit judge had issued two days earlier, a week into the protests. (January 15, 1929–April 4, 1968) began coordinating a series of sit-ins and nonviolent demonstrations against racial injustice in Birmingham, Alabama. ![]() On April 3, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. ![]()
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