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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — An archive at Virginia Theological Seminary has discovered what it says is an early draft of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," one of the most consequential documents of the American Civil Rights Movement.
The draft was found in the papers of the late Bishop John M. Burgess and his wife, Esther, donated to the African American Episcopal Historical Collection by their daughters, the seminary said in announcing the discovery Thursday. The collection is a joint initiative of Virginia Theological Seminary and the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church, housed at the seminary's Bishop Payne Library on Seminary Road.
King wrote the original letter in April 1963 while jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, in fragments on the margins of a newspaper smuggled into his cell. He gave the newspaper to his close adviser Clarence B. Jones, who was credited with smuggling the writings out and arranging to have them typed. Because the letter was written in pieces and not always in order, multiple drafts circulated as the text was assembled. The seminary said the document in the Burgess papers is one of those early drafts. Jones died May 22 at age 95.
The draft was identified by Nick Gentry, a University of Maryland intern processing the Burgess papers for the collection, the seminary said. Archives staff researched the document's provenance, consulting civil rights leader and former U.N. ambassador Andrew Young about the early drafts and their transfer to the Quaker-founded American Friends Service Committee. Staff also compared the seminary's copy with versions held by other repositories and with the final published text, identifying differences in structure and quotations that they said support its identification as an earlier draft. The final version, for example, includes a quotation from John Bunyan that does not appear in the seminary's copy.
After the seminary's analysis, the document was reviewed by experts at Swann Galleries in New York, who certified that it is one of the original 11-page typesets produced by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization King led.
How the draft came into the Burgesses' possession is unknown, the seminary said. But Bishop Burgess, the first Black diocesan bishop in the Episcopal Church, and his wife were deeply engaged in the Civil Rights Movement; Burgess was among the clergy who met with President John F. Kennedy five days before the Civil Rights Act was sent to Congress.
"Just sometimes there is a find where we can literally touch history," the Very Rev. Ian Markham, dean and president of Virginia Theological Seminary, said in a statement. "This find is one of those moments." The Rev. Alfred Moss, co-chair of the collection's steering committee, called the discovery "a recent blessing and fulfillment of the work and ministry of the African American Episcopal Historical Collection."
The document is held at the Bishop Payne Library, which is open to researchers by appointment for specific projects but is not open to the general public. Researchers can request access through the library's Visiting Researcher Appointment Request form.
