Instructions from a nation shifter

1963, Birmingham, Alabama.

Martin Luther King, Jr. sits alone in a jail cell. One of twenty-nine arrests in his career. In the preceding days, a group of eight white, Southern religious leaders issued a statement calling King's movement "unwise and untimely." So he is writing them a letter.

Posterity will find this letter remarkable for at least two reasons. Number one, it was rare for King to rebuke his individual critics. He was in the business of large-scale change.

Number two, this letter will become King's recipe for taking non-violent, direct action.

"In any non-violent campaign, there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine if injustices are alive, negotiation, self-purification, and direct action," he writes.

First, you substantiate an injustice. Second, you negotiate with the party responsible for it.

Third, you turn inward.

Before you take action outwardly (which, for King's movement, usually meant sit-ins and marches), you turn inward and engage in what King called self-purification:

"We started having workshops on nonviolence and repeatedly asked ourselves the questions, 'Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?' and 'Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?'"

Two other great civil rights change makers, Mandela and Gandhi, also had significant experience going inward. Like King, when they acted outwardly, their movements were disciplined and purposeful, drew tremendous backlash, and shifted whole nations.

We have nothing short of nations to shift, right?

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King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail is one of the most important of American documents.