An undocumented <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/luxury/books-&amp;-manuscripts/book/first-edition?locale=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first printing</a> of The Riverside Church Speech by <a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?query=Martin%20Luther%20King%20Jr&amp;tab=objects&amp;sortBy=bsp_dotcom_prod_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Martin Luther King Jr</a>.<ul><li>Martin Luther King Jr. (American).</li><li>Later titled Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence.</li><li>n.p.:&nbsp;n.p,&nbsp;[1967].</li><li>8 pages.</li><li>Printed rectos only.</li><li>Top stapled self-wrappers.</li></ul> Previously unrecorded first printing of one of King's most important speeches: his anti-war address at The Riverside Church, delivered exactly one year to the day before his assassination. "If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood." King's Riverside Church Speech (later titled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence," but here untitled) was the civil rights leader's first sustained and major public statement regarding the Vietnam War. Before a crowd of more than 3000, King called for not only an end to the war, but explicitly linked the anti-war movement to the larger movements for civil rights and economic justice: "Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem." This edition is unknown and unrecorded. It is not mentioned in the major King bibliographies. The introductory paragraph ("The following is the exclusive and authorized publication of the address [...] sponsored by Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam") suggests it was likely printed either by that group or King's camp. Such a printing could have been issued for members not in attendance, for press distribution at or immediately following the event, or simply to secure copyright. (The text also ends with a copyright notice by King, dated 1967.) This version differs in a number of significant ways from final published versions that appeared later. Some of these differences are accounted for by this printing's "slightly condensed" version. Others, however, clearly predate King's later revisions and finalizations which, along with the lack of title on this edition, all clearly mark the text as an early version, contemporaneous or nearly so with the event itself — and almost certainly preceding the earliest (also very rare) reprints undertaken by a number of California groups (where Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam were based, and all under the title "Beyond Vietnam") in the subsequent months. Indeed, the ditto'd presentation strongly suggests a smaller, more immediate circulation. The speech was widely criticized at the time. In the following days, more than 150 newspapers around the country condemned King, and in the aftermath of the address President Johnson dis-invited King from the White House, a rift in their relationship from which they never recovered. Among Black leaders the reception was also decidedly mixed, with many believing King's focus on the war distracted from more pressing concerns. As journalist Tavis Smiley, who produced a documentary on the speech, explained: "it was the most controversial speech he ever gave. It was the speech he labored over the most [and] got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever seen or done." Nevertheless, its reputation has only grown in the ensuing years. James Bevel considered it King's greatest speech, and King's intersectional understanding has been increasingly recognized as prescient. A rare and revealing document from one of King's most enduring public addresses.

The Riverside Church Speech: "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence"

Martin Luther King, Jr.Birmingham Jail Logbook, signed by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy Single bifolium (11 x 14 inches; 288 x 356 mm), two conjugate leaves from a commercially-printed ledger book, dated between 3/4/63 and 11/27/63, ruled in blue and red on cream stock, signed by King twelve times—seven on page 61 and five on page 63—and Ralph D. Abernathy five times, three on page 61 and twice on page 63. Partial separation and minor loss at center hinge, light handling and moderate toning, signatures in blue ballpoint ink, bold and legible. "INJUSTICE ANYWHERE IS A THREAT TO JUSTICE EVERYWHERE." This seemingly routine record of incoming correspondence reflects on the most consequential episodes in American history. The sheet logs the incoming mail of the Birmingham City Jail for the spring and summer of 1963, its columns densely filled in multiple hands with dates, names, delivery modes, and recipient signatures, documenting the flow of correspondence into a facility that was, for a critical stretch of weeks, the temporary receiving point for Southern Christian Leadership Conference and its leadership. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested on Good Friday, April 12, 1963, during the SCLC's Project C—for Confrontation—a direct-action campaign targeting Birmingham's segregated commercial district. The Birmingham authorities, under Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor, were among the most intransigent in the South, and King's imprisonment was both a calculated strategic move and a genuine danger. While confined, he read in a smuggled copy of the Birmingham News an open letter signed by eight white Alabama clergymen urging him to stand down, to trust the courts, to wait. His response became the "Letter from Birmingham Jail," arguably the most important prose document of the American civil rights movement. The Letter is a work of extraordinary rhetorical and moral force: a systematic dismantling of the case for gradualism, a defense of nonviolent direct action as the only available instrument of justice, and a sustained meditation on the difference between just and unjust law drawing on Augustine, Aquinas, Tillich, and Buber with the fluency of a trained theologian. Composed in fragments under harsh conditions of physical confinement and surveillance, smuggled out through King's legal team, and distributed first as a mimeographed pamphlet before achieving wider publication, King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was written against time and against the counsel of white moderation — and has been repeatedly reprinted, anthologized, and taught. A sympathetic contact smuggled in a copy of the April 12 Birmingham News, which carried "A Call for Unity," an open letter signed by eight white Alabama clergymen urging King to abandon his campaign and trust the courts. The statement provoked him into an immediate response. As King later wrote in Why We Can't Wait: "Begun on the margins of the newspaper in which the statement appeared while I was in jail, the letter was continued on scraps of writing paper supplied by a friendly Negro trusty, and concluded on a pad my attorneys were eventually permitted to leave me." Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, arranged $160,000 in bail to free King and the other jailed protesters; King walked free on April 20, 1963. This log sheet is a rare institutional artifact of that history: a record-keeping trace capturing King’s incoming correspondence—signed by him twelve times. The entries for April 12 and the weeks immediately following document the rapid flower of incoming correspondence to King, Ralph Abernathy, and their associates in real time—the telegrams, special delivery letters, and registered mail that connected the jailed leadership to the movement outside. The signatures in the right-hand columns, acknowledging receipt, include King's own. Among the few known surviving artifacts directly tied to King’s Birmingham confinement, this jail communication log preserves an institutional record of the incoming correspondence acknowledged by King and Abernathy during the days surrounding the composition and circulation of the Letter from Birmingham Jail. The entries date between 3/4/63 and 11/27/63 including the period between 4/12/63 to 4/20/63, the dates of King’s incarceration. The four pages (front and back) are still partially hinged at the center, numbered 61 to 64. Each line represents a written communication received at the jail, with the left-hand page recording the date, the inmate's name, and the type of correspondence, while the right-hand page was reserved for the recipient's signature confirming delivery. While page 60 (which would have recorded the incoming log written by an employee of the jail) is not present, the facing page 61 documents 7 incoming items signed for by King. Page 62 notes the delivery of a "SP Dil Letter" (special delivery letter) on 4/17; a "W U Telegram" and "Reg. Let." arrived on 4/19, and two more Western Union telegrams on 4/20, the day of his release. A powerful document of the Civil Rights movement, a poignant reminder of King’s fight against institutional injustice, logged during the creation of a masterwork of American letters, and its clarion call for Freedom everywhere: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” PROVENANCEAccording to family oral history reported by Hake’s, the pages were preserved by a Birmingham jail employee after he was instructed to destroy the ledger, then descended in that employee’s family — Hake’s Auctions, Auction #231 Part I, 24 February 2021, lot 1

Martin Luther King’s Incarceration for Peaceful Protest: The Birmingham Jail Warden’s Log

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