The literature on the Birmingham Campaign and King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is voluminous. For fast and authoritative initial overviews, consult Taylor Branch’s segments on Birmingham in Parting the Waters or Episode 4 (“No Easy Walk”) of the documentary Eyes on the Prize (which contains unforgettable images and interviews). Martin Luther King’s indispensable reflections on Birmingham in Why We Can’t Wait are also very accessible.
If you are looking for a very detailed history, see Diane McWhorter’s prize-winning Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (New York, 2002). McWhorter’s personal and journalistic approach is the strength and weakness of her comprehensive history. McWhorter offers key information on the composition and early publication of King’s “Letter” (pages 354-355).
Rhetorical analysis of “Letter from Birmingham Jail” might begin with S. Jonathan Bass, Blessed Are the Peacemakers (2001), which offers insights into the clergymen whose letter prompted Dr. King to write; and all analyses of Dr. King’s rhetoric must take into account Keith D. Miller’s work in Voice of Deliverance (1992).
Among the many enlightening essays on the “Letter” are ones by Richard Fulkerson, “The Public Letter as a Rhetorical Form: Structure, Logic, and Style in King’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail'” in Quarterly Journal of Speech 65 (1979): 121-136; Martha Watson, “The Issue Is Justice: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Response to the Birmingham Clergy,” in Rhetoric and Public Affairs 7 (2004): 1-22; John H. Patton, “A Transforming Response: Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail'” in Rhetoric and Public Affairs 7 (2004): 53-65; E. Culpepper Clark, “The Historiographic Dilemma in Myrdal’s American Creed: Rescuing a Rhetorical Moment” in Martin Luther King and the Sermonic Power of Public Discourse, ed. Carolyn Calloway-Thomas and John Lucaites (University of Alabama Press, 1993); Ronald Lee, “The Rhetorical Construction of Time in Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail'” in Southern Communication Journal 56 (1991): 279-88; Michael Osborn, “Rhetorical Distance in ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail'” in Rhetoric and Public Affairs 7 (2004): 23-35; Davi Johnson, “Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1963 Birmingham Campaign as Image Event” in Rhetoric and Public Affairs 10 (2007): 1-25; and Michael Leff and Ebony Utley, “Instrumental and Constitutive Rhetoric in Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail'” in Rhetoric and Public Affairs 7 (2004): 37-51.