Letter From Birmingham City Jail

Letter From Birmingham City Jail

From his jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama in April 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote an open letter to eight white clergymen who had criticized King’s “unwise and untimely” demonstrations of civil disobedience. Richly illustrated by Ringgold in this book, King’s letter defends his commitment to nonviolent protest and underscores the urgency of the civil rights struggle. The book’s frontispiece depicts King writing from behind bars. The following seven screen prints illuminate the violence and segregation King addresses in his letter. In one illustration, the embodied spirits of four African American girls fly over the Birmingham church where they were killed in 1963 by a bomb placed by Ku Klux Klansmen. Another envisions a white congregation listening to a sermon as the shadows of police brutality begin to emerge from the church’s stained glass windows, echoing King’s appeal to the Christian community to stand up for racial justice.

Faith Ringgold

2007

Artist book containing eight serigraphs

David C. Driskell Center Permanent Collection,
Gift from the Collection of Sandra and Lloyd Baccus