'Letter from a Birmingham Jail' poignant, timely

On April 16, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was sitting in a stark jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, where he had been arrested for engaging in nonviolent direct action.

An ally had smuggled a newspaper into the jail that contained the recently published piece, “A Call To Unity,” written by eight local white clergymen who thought civil rights should be won in the courts, not in the streets. King began drafting his response on the margins of the newspaper — the only paper he was allowed at first. Later, a black trusty brought King some scratch paper.

King’s lawyers pieced the writing back to...