Why We Can't Wait

Why We Can’t Wait is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s history of the Birmingham protests that took place in 1963 and his effort to explain the aims and goals of the Civil Rights Movement to a national audience. King explores the background of the protests in Birmingham, the importance of nonviolence as the primary approach to protest, how this approach played out in Birmingham, and the aftermath of the protests in an introduction and eight chapters organized chronologically.

In the Introduction and first two chapters of the book, King provides background on the summer of 1963. In the Introduction, King uses a hypothetical African-American boy from Harlem and girl from Birmingham to represent the unsettled mood of African-Americans just prior to the events of 1963 and their decision toagitate for change in 1963. In Chapter One, “The Negro Revolution—Why 1963?” King describes in greater detail the historical, psychological, and international contexts that led to the protests in Birmingham in 1963, which marked the centennial anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation that freed many African-Americans from slavery. In Chapter Two, “The Sword That Heals,” King provides a detailed history of African-American responses to oppression and presents nonviolence as the answer to the flaws in these prior approaches.

In the next four chapters, King discusses the early efforts by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and its local affiliate, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), to organize the protests and offers a chronology of the protests. In Chapter Three, “Bull Connor’s Birmingham,” King makes the case for Birmingham, “the most segregated city in America” (49), as the proper testing ground for nonviolent direct action. In Chapter Four, “New Day in Birmingham,” King describes the extensive training volunteers completed, the political strategizing the leaders were forced to use to choose the timing of the marches, and King and Ralph Abernathy’s arrests as the protests moved into a more active phase.

Chapter Five, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” is a revised version of a letter a jailed King wrote to Alabama clergymen who saw the protests as poorly timed and ill-advised. In Chapter Six, “Black and White Together,” King recounts the escalating violence of Bull Connor’s response to the protestors and the successful negotiations to force changes in Birmingham.

The final chapters of the book include the results of the protests and King’s vision of the future of the movement. In Chapter Seven, “The Summer of Our Discontent,” King discusses the gains achieved in the aftermath of the protests, the lingering violence and inequality that proved there was more work to be done, and the catapulting of the movement to a bigger stage with the March on Washington. In Chapter Eight, “The Days to Come,” the longest chapter, King outlines his ambitions for theCivil Rights Movement, including a greater political role for African-Americans, a broad program to lift both black and white people out of poverty, and a greater focus on the potential for nonviolent direct action to address global issues like nuclear proliferation. Jesse L. Jackson’s afterword highlights the legacy of his work in these areas.

King’s deft mingling of the chronology of the Birmingham protests, narratives of African-American and American history, discussion of the philosophy of nonviolence, and analysis of the psychology of race and racism allows him to make a case for the Civil Rights Movement as a political force whose moment has arrived.