Grades 7–12 | Aurora Homeschool Academy · BleuLearn Curriculum
This volume documents: The documented strategy of the civil rights movement — the SNCC founding statement (1960), Pauli Murray's 1944 memorandum on legal strategy (which became foundational to Brown v. Board), and King's Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963). The civil rights movement was not spontaneous. It was documented, strategic, and argued in explicit legal and moral terms.
Background context: King wrote the Letter from Birmingham Jail on April 16, 1963, while jailed for leading nonviolent demonstrations. He wrote it in the margins of a newspaper because he had no other paper. It was addressed to eight white Alabama clergymen who had called his demonstrations "unjust and unwise." The letter became one of the most important documents in American history — written by a man in a jail cell, arguing from the margins of a newspaper. Pauli Murray (1910–1985) was a Black woman lawyer, poet, activist, and the first Black person to earn a JSD (Doctor of Juridical Science) from Yale. Her 1944 memorandum arguing against "separate but equal" directly influenced Thurgood Marshall's legal strategy in Brown v. Board of Education.
The Primary Source
The Document Says
Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr., April 16, 1963
Written on newspaper margins while jailed. Available at the King Center (thekingcenter.org). Free.
"One may well ask: How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others? The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."
Apply the Four Questions
The Four Questions: (1) Who wrote it? (2) When? (3) What does it say? (4) Why does it matter? Use specific words from the document in every answer.
Q1 — Who wrote it, and to whom? King wrote this to eight white Alabama clergymen who called his demonstrations "unjust." What does knowing his audience change about how you read his argument? Why does he begin by thanking them for their criticism?
Q2 — When? April 1963 — year of the March on Washington, Birmingham Children's Crusade, and Medgar Evers' assassination. What was the documented urgency? Why does King say he cannot "wait"?
Q3 — What does it say? Find King's documented definition of an unjust law. Write it out. What is the documented basis for distinguishing just from unjust? What does "moral responsibility to disobey" mean as a documented argument?
Q4 — Why does it matter? King wrote this while jailed for nonviolent protest. What does the documented circumstance of the writing — a jail cell, newspaper margins, addressed to white clergy — document about the conditions under which this argument was made? What does that tell you about what nonviolent resistance actually looked like?
Claim–Evidence–Warrant
Write one paragraph: Make a claim about the legal and moral argument King makes in this letter. Cite a specific phrase as evidence. Explain why his argument was specifically addressed to his audience (warrant).
BleuLearn Pause
What does this primary source document that a textbook's description of the same event would not?
Archive Assignment
Access the King Center (thekingcenter.org). Read the full Letter from Birmingham Jail. Find King's documented definition of an unjust law (it comes a few paragraphs after the excerpt above). Write it here and apply Question 3: