Doing Time: King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

The enduring rhetorical power of King's "Letter" has much to do with the way in which it responds to the central problem faced by the civil rights movement generally, and especially in Birmingham: is this the time for civil disobedience? King made the question of timeliness the central motif in his "Letter." In developing three interrelated conceptions of time—"sacred," "personal," and "patriotic"—King challenged his audience, both emotionally and intellectually, to achieve a new understanding of time and to fulfill its demands in a moment of crisis.