More than six decades after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. composed his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the then-young Black woman who helped transform scattered notes on smuggled scraps of paper into one of history’s greatest writings is finally receiving greater recognition.
Willie Pearl Mackey King worked for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) from 1962 to 1966, serving on King’s executive staff and working directly for the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, his chief of staff. In April 1963, she spent two nights and three days piecing together and typing the fragments that became King’s celebrated defense of nonviolent resistance.
Now, Maryland educator and scholar Donna Sweeting is helping establish a foundation to preserve Willie King’s legacy, document her civil rights work and create scholarships for young people.
The effort grew from the recent discovery of an early draft of the letter in the African American Episcopal Historical Collection at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. A University of Maryland intern, Nick Gentry, discovered the document while cataloging the collection, the seminary said.
Preserving her legacy
“The main thing is to preserve the legacy of the work she has done,” Sweeting said. “We want to create opportunities for people to actually begin to understand the movement from the perspective of someone whose name may not be so well known as Dr. King and many of the others.”
The foundation is being incorporated in Maryland, and an application for federal nonprofit status is underway. Its plans include a “freedom ride,” retracing parts of Willie King’s own journey and recordings of her memories in her own voice.
Dr. King was arrested April 12, 1963, during demonstrations against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. From his jail cell, he began responding to eight white clergymen who had characterized the demonstrations as “unwise and untimely.”
Without a notepad or a pen, Dr. King began writing with a pencil stub on whatever paper he could find. Clarence Jones, his attorney, personally smuggled the handwritten fragments out of the jail.
“Dr. King would be writing on the edges of the newspaper, toilet paper, greasy sandwich bags, greasy napkins,” Willie King recalled. “Clarence Jones would put those pieces of paper under his suit jacket.”
‘We’ve got a tough one’
Jones delivered the fragments to the SCLC office, where Walker and Willie King waited.
“Miss Willie, we’ve got a tough one,” she remembered Walker telling her. “The leader (Dr. King) would like this to get out as soon as possible.”
“Honestly, I thought it was just an ordinary letter,” she said.
The pieces were neither numbered nor arranged. Willie King — working in a skirt, because women wearing pants were forbidden — knelt on the floor, assembling the scraps into order before typing them on an IBM Selectric typewriter.
“I had to get down on my knees with Scotch tape and try to put those pieces of paper together because they were in no order,” she said. “It was terrible trying to read — looked like sometimes what he had drawn as opposed to had written.”
Walker helped her interpret Dr. King’s theological language. Willie King was not allowed to leave the office until the work was finished.
“I wanted to cry, but I was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry,” she said. “But I went in that bathroom again. It was my favorite crying place.”
Demand soared after protests
Once a draft was completed, Jones returned it to Dr. King for review and signature. Willie King and a local woman, Betty Hill, reproduced copies, addressed envelopes and carried them to the post office.
Initially, demand for the letter was modest. That changed after Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor unleashed police dogs and high-pressure fire hoses on children demonstrating in Kelly Ingram Park.
“People started saying, ‘What is going on in Birmingham?’” Willie King said. “Everybody wanted a copy of the Birmingham jail letter. I could hardly make enough copies. Things just blew up all of a sudden.”
After leaving SCLC, Willie King joined the newly established Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), where she worked for 32 years. Her presence helped build trust among Black workers who were hesitant to file discrimination complaints with a federal agency.
‘It was all God’
For Willie King, preserving the story is not about personal acclaim. It is about the “beloved community” Dr. King envisioned — one grounded in love, dignity and respect.
“It was all God,” she said. “I had no connections. I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t have anything. But I’m obedient. So I followed God’s leading.”