What Was the Most Important Letter in History?

Clayborne Carson, founding director, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute

Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From was little-noticed in April 1963, when his colleagues in the civil-rights movement stitched it together from the fragments he’d drafted in his cell. Major civil-rights legislation was not then on President John F. Kennedy’s agenda. Yet the letter has gained recognition as the 20th century’s most influential essay on civil disobedience.