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…