King spent his Easter Triduum in jail

I'm writing on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There is a lot of commentary today on how we forget Dr. King's passion for poor people, for victims of war, for all the unpopular causes that comprise the work of acting for justice and seeking peace. And, yes, we also forget how much time he spent in jail cells and church meeting halls and engaged in scholarly study.

In the '80s, during a St. Louis campaign against nuclear weapons made by General Dynamics, we read "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" out loud at several vigils. It is a long, thoughtful, analytic essay, not a bumper sticker. King was arrested in Birmingham on Good Friday, April 12, 1963, along with 2,000 other men, women and children. On Holy Saturday, he read in the Birmingham newspaper a public criticism of his non-violent resistance to racism. It was written by eight white, Alabaman clergymen.

He began writing his response on the sides of the newspaper. Visitors smuggled scraps of paper to him and smuggled his scraps out to a local church, where the pastor and his secretary pieced the scraps together, trying to make a coherent statement. The letter was first published in three different journals that June.