Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote this line in 1963 while jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, after participating in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation. Local white clergy had published a statement criticizing the protests as “unwise and untimely,” urging Black citizens to pursue change through the courts rather than direct action. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” responds to that critique, defending civil disobedience and explaining why activists could not wait for gradual reform. In that setting, the sentence underscores his argument that racial injustice in Birmingham was not a local matter but a moral and civic concern for the entire nation.

The quote asserts the interdependence of moral and legal order: when injustice is tolerated in one place, it weakens the credibility and stability of justice everywhere. King rejects the idea that outsiders should stay out of “local” conflicts; instead, he frames injustice as a systemic problem that spreads through shared institutions, precedents, and public conscience. The line also functions as a call to solidarity, implying that neutrality is complicity and that those not directly harmed still have a stake in resisting oppression. It encapsulates King’s broader view that rights are universal and that delayed justice corrodes democracy itself.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”