King began the letter by responding to the criticism that he and his fellow activists were “outsiders” causing trouble in the streets of Birmingham. To this, King referred to his responsibility as the leader of the SCLC, which had numerous affiliated organizations throughout the South. “I was invited”[5] by our Birmingham affiliate “because injustice is here,”[5] in what is probably the most racially divided city in the country, with its brutal police, unjust courts, and many “unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches.”[6] Referring to his belief that all communities and states were interrelated, King wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly… Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”[7] King also warned that if white people successfully rejected his nonviolent activists as rabble-rousing outside agitators, this could encourage millions of African Americans to “seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies, a development that will lead inevitably to a frightening