Within a red binder, each of its typewritten pages encased in a plastic sleeve, sits an early draft of the famous letter written by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as he was held in a jail in Birmingham, Alabama.
Ten pages that once were considered for the 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail” were discovered in March by a graduate student concluding an internship by examining papers donated to the African American Episcopal Historical Collection, a joint venture of the Virginia Theological Seminary and the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church.
The draft was found in the papers of Bishop John M. Burgess, the first African American to serve as an Episcopal diocesan bishop, and his wife, Esther. The papers, donated by the daughters of the couple that was active in the Civil Rights Movement, are housed at the seminary near Washington, D.C. To read more, click here
