05/11/2026
The Rev. Dr. Al Moss, co-chair of the African American Episcopal Historical Collection (AAEHC) Steering Committee, is pleased and proud to announce that the AAEHC has added to its Collection an original typewritten draft of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, “1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Dr. King’s 1963 Letter is a masterpiece that articulates the theological, moral, and philosophical foundation that is the basis for non-violent direct action, and other means of civil disobedience for the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and beyond.
Dr. King wrote the 1963 Letter in newspaper margins while incarcerated in a Birmingham, AL jail following his refusal to obey a Court Order to cease and desist from demonstrating against Birmingham’s legally, but oppressively enforced segregation. King wrote of Birmingham as “probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the U.S.” His Letter is a response to an open and widely published letter written by eight “moderate white clergy” urging King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to slow down the speed for racial integration as “unwise and untimely.” King’s message made clear that only those who are oppressed can set the timetable for seeking an end to centuries of racial injustice.
The Letter was just weeks ago discovered in a routine archival processing of the donated papers of the late Right Rev. John Melville Burgess, who had been the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts. He was America’s first Black Episcopal diocesan Bishop. Bishop Burgess died in 2003 at the age of 94 in Vineyard Haven, Mass. He directed that his papers were to be donated to the AAEHC.
The AAEHC, founded in 2003 to chronicle the history of Black Episcopalians, is a joint project of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church and the Bishop Payne Library of the Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS). VTS maintains the Collection in its Payne Library.
