“We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.” That was from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” The letter was written while King was detained in solitary confinement for taking part in the Birmingham Campaign against racial segregation. After reading an article published in a local newspaper about religious leaders condemning his nonviolent demonstrations, King began to put together his response to them, which led to this famous letter. At first he wrote in the margins of the newspaper he was given; he later moved on to using scraps of paper, and then finally a legal pad provided by his lawyers. After his letter was compiled and typed out by his associates, it …