Letter from a Jerusalem Jail

Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter from a Birmingham jail. It resonates strongly with what the apostles said to their Jerusalem jailers.

What were you doing in April 1963?

It's been a while -- 50 years.

If you are a senior citizen, you might have watched the debut of the long-running soap opera General Hospital. If you are a baby boomer, you might have purchased the first album put out by the Beatles, Please Please Me.

If you are a member of Generations X, Y or Z, you weren't even born yet.

But if you were a leader of the clergy in Alabama, you would have received a strongly-worded letter from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

On April 16, 1963, King issued his Letter from Birmingham Jail.

The civil rights leader was locked up in the city jail after being arrested for his part in the Birmingham campaign, a nonviolent protest conducted by the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. King was president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and had been invited by the Alabama Christian Movement to take part in the protest.

King wrote his letter on the margins of a newspaper, which was the only paper he could...