In a letter written from the Birmingham City Jail in 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed that Birmingham, Alabama was "probably the most segregated city in the United States." Martin Luther King's work, Why We Can't Wait, initially provides the argument for why African Americans were ready to seek equality in a part of the country whose roots were deeply planted in segregation. King stated in his introduction that “The war had been won but not only in peace. Equality had never come. Equality was a hundred years overdue (xiii). The anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 reminded blacks that their freedom was merely a legal term and that they were not yet truly free. This was King's argument that the Negro's place in society, while unprepared for change, was in desperate need of reform. Over the course of Birmingham's civil rights movement, King would be jailed, denied bail, and attempts would be made on his life. Despite all this discouragement, King remained confident that it was still a noteworthy success. "... I'm in Birmingham because injustice is h...