"A Call for Unity" was an open letter published in Birmingham, Alabama, on April 12, 1963, by eight local white clergymen in response to civil rights demonstrations taking place in the area at the time. In the letter, they took issue with events "directed and led in part by outsiders," and they urged activists to engage in local negotiations and to use the courts if rights were being denied, rather than to protest. The term "outsider" was a thinly-veiled reference to Martin Luther King Jr., who replied four days later, with his famous "

Letter from Birmingham Jail The "Letter from Birmingham Jail", also known as the "Letter from Birmingham City Jail" and "The Negro Is Your Brother", is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King Jr. It says that people have a moral responsibility to b ...

." He argued that

direct action Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power (e.g. economic or physical) to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to oth ...

was necessary to protest unjust laws. The authors of "A Call for Unity" had written "An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense" in January 1963.

Signatories

* C. C. J. Carpenter, D.D., LL.D., Bishop,

Episcopal Diocese of Alabama The Episcopal Diocese of Alabama is located in Province IV of the Episcopal Church and serves the state of Alabama with the exception of the extreme southern region, including Mobile, which forms part of the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast. ...

Joseph Aloysius Durick Joseph Aloysius Durick (October 13, 1914 – June 26, 1994) was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Nashville in Tennessee from 1969 to 1975. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the ...

, D.D., Auxiliary Bishop, Catholic Diocese of Mobile, Birmingham * Milton L. Grafman, Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, Birmingham, Alabama * Paul Hardin, Bishop of the Alabama-West Florida Conference of the Methodist Church * Nolan Bailey Harmon, Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the Methodist Church * George M. Murray, D.D., LL.D., Bishop Coadjutor, Episcopal Diocese of Alabama *

Edward V. Ramage Edward V. Ramage (October 2, 1908 – December 1981) was a Minister (Christianity), minister of the Presbyterian Church in the United States in Alabama. Early life Edward Ramage was born October 2, 1908, in Weaverville, North Carolina, to Samue ...

, Moderator, Synod of the Alabama

Presbyterian Church in the United States The Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS, originally Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America) was a Protestant denomination in the Southern and border states of the United States that existed from 1861 to 1983. That y ...

* Earl Stallings, Pastor, First Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama

References

* Bass, S. Jonathan (2001). ''Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail"''. Baton Rouge: LSU Press. .

External links

*
"Letter from Birmingham Jail"
as PDF and audio version History of Alabama United States documents 1963 documents Open letters 1963 in Alabama {{civil-rights-movement-stub