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Who really said it

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere

Written by Martin Luther King Jr. 1929–1968 · Baptist minister & civil-rights leader, writing from jail in April 1963
Verified In copyright

From King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” dated April 16, 1963 — written in the margins of a newspaper while he was jailed for leading nonviolent protests. The line is confirmed in the widely published text of the letter, later collected in his 1964 book Why We Can’t Wait.

Last verified 7 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail," April 16, 1963

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Estate of Martin Luther King Jr.). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

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Provenance

Where the line comes from

Work
“Letter from Birmingham Jail”
Author
Martin Luther King Jr.
Written
April 16, 1963, Birmingham, Alabama
First published
May 1963 (American Friends Service Committee); collected in Why We Can’t Wait, 1964

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. ↑ the famous line is the opening of a longer sentence about “mutuality”

King wrote the line in response to being called an “outside agitator” — arguing that no community’s injustice can be treated as someone else’s problem.

Stanford King Institute: Letter from Birmingham Jail

How we verified this

In copyright

The letter is a 1963 work of Martin Luther King Jr. and remains under copyright (administered by the King Estate); it is not public domain. Quote briefly with attribution.

Fact-check

A real quote — but often mis-sourced

The attribution to King is correct. The common error is which of his works it comes from: the line is regularly assumed to be part of the August 1963 “I Have a Dream” address, or quoted with no source at all.

the “I Have a Dream” speech common mix-up

The line is not from the March on Washington address; it appears in the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” written April 16, 1963 — more than four months before the August 28 speech, per Wikipedia ↗.

Bottom line: genuinely King’s words — from the Letter from Birmingham Jail ↗, April 16, 1963.

Context

Why it mattered

King wrote the letter in response to a public statement by eight white Alabama clergymen who called his Birmingham campaign “unwise and untimely” and the work of an outsider. His answer — “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” — reframed the local protest as a matter of universal moral concern.

The sentence continues into one of King’s central ideas: that all people are “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Justice

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Letter from Birmingham Jailen.wikipedia.org

Overview of the letter, its April 16, 1963 date, context, and 1963–64 publication history.
Annotated Letter (King Papers)kinginstitute.stanford.edu

Stanford King Institute’s annotated scholarly edition of the full letter.
The quote in contextgoodreads.com

Reproduces the fuller passage (“network of mutuality … single garment of destiny”).
'Letter From Birmingham Jail' 50 Years Laternpr.org

NPR retrospective on the letter’s writing and legacy.
Letter from a Birmingham Jailnul.org

National Urban League hosting of the letter’s text.

The author

About Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

1929–1968 · Baptist minister & civil-rights leader

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) was a Baptist minister and the leading figure of the American civil-rights movement, an advocate of nonviolent resistance who led the Montgomery bus boycott and the 1963 March on Washington. He wrote the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in April 1963 while jailed for civil-disobedience protests, and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. He was assassinated in Memphis in 1968.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963, in Why We Can’t Wait (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).

MLA (9th ed.)

King, Martin Luther, Jr. "Letter from Birmingham Jail." Why We Can't Wait, Harper & Row, 1964.

APA (7th ed.)

King, M. L., Jr. (1964). Letter from Birmingham jail. In Why we can't wait. Harper & Row.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’?” Last verified 7 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/injustice-anywhere-is-a-threat-to-justice-everywhere

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