I am in Birmingham because injustice is here, declared Martin Luther King, Jr.
Gospel of Freedom gives us a startling perspective on the Letter and the man who wrote it: an angry prophet who chastised American whites, found solace in the faith and resilience of the slaves, and knew That moral appeal without Struggle never brings justice..
Rieder has interviewed King\'s surviving colleagues, and located rare audiotapes of King speaKing in the mass meetings of 1963.
Scholar Jonathan Rieder delves deeper than anyone before into the Letter-illuminating both its timeless message and its crucial position in the history of civil rights.
His insistence on the urgency of Freedom Now would inspire not just the marchers of Birmingham and Selma, but peaceful insurgents from Tiananmen to Tahrir Squares.
King drafted a furious rebuttal That emerged as the Letter from Birmingham Jail-a work That would take its place among the masterpieces of American moral argument alongside those of Thoreau and Lincoln.
Alone in his cell, reading a newspaper, he found a statement from eight moderate clergymen who branded the protests extremist and untimely.
To revive it, King made a sacrificial act on Good Friday, April 12, 1963: he was arrested.
But the insurgency faltered.
He had come to That city of racist terror convinced That massive protest could topple Jim Crow.
I am in Birmingham because injustice is here, declared Martin Luther King, Jr
