2015 Reprint of 1963 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition. Not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. King's Letter was written while the civil rights leader was serving a sentence for spearheading the mass protest demonstrations of 1963 in Birmingham. In it, King responds to a group of white Alabama religious leaders who publicly urged him to limit his activities to local and federal courts. King's letter, which laid out his counterargument, was one of the definitive writings of the civil war era: It codified the methods of direct-action civil disobedience and offered a vigorous defense of its theological and moral foundations.