Why We Can’t Wait

A book in which Martin Luther King Jr. explains the events of 1963, the year of the Birmingham campaign and the March on Washington, and argues that Black Americans could no longer accept gradual change. King describes the conditions that made 1963 a turning point, the method of nonviolent direct action, which he calls a sword that heals, and the planning and conduct of the Birmingham campaign against segregation. At its centre is the 'Letter from Birmingham Jail', written in April 1963 in reply to white clergymen who had called the protests unwise and untimely. There King argues that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, that a just law is one that squares with the moral law, drawing on Augustine and Aquinas, and that unjust laws may be broken openly by those willing to accept the penalty. He criticises the white moderate who prefers order to justice. The final chapters assess the gains of 1963 and propose a Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged.

It contains King's fullest argument for civil disobedience and nonviolent protest, and it shows how a political philosophy was tested in a real campaign.